Paper Writing

This week marks the end of the Startup Projects. To finish them up, we've written papers about the experiments we've done. What was cool about writing the paper is that that marked the first time I used Latex. Despite my lack of knowledge, however, I just dove right in and started writing. While it did require quite a bit of referencing documentation, ultimately I found it an easier method of formatting the paper in order to present it in a clear, consistent, and official manner. It even allowed me to easily import MATLAB plots into the paper.
In addition to a new tool with which to write with the minimal amount of mouse input possible, the paper writing itself was a wonderful way to go back and reflect on my methods of research. For example, data collection. Recreating the attack was a fairly simple to repeat, but in retrospect I could have collected data in a smarter way, by using a wider range for the variable I did vary, and by taking multiple readings for each value of the variable to get better data. However, these are things that I will be keeping in mind for research I partake in in the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation

Image
In an effort to better understand other methods of signal modulation, I decided to read up on Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. QAM is a method of transmitting a signal in a more efficient way. While Amplitude Modulation varies the amplitude of a signal to encode data, Frequency Modulation changes the frequency of the signal, and Phase Modulation modifies the phase, Quadrature Amplitude Modulation uses a mix of two of the three. It uses two carrier waves, a sine and cosine (in other words, one wave phase shifted by 90 degrees), and modulates using both amplitude and phase variations. A scheme like this is more efficient than simply Amplitude Modulating a signal. By having two phase shifted carrier waves, there is another channel to transmit information. It can also allow multiple bits to be encoded per symbol, which allows for schemes like 16QAM. It's not without drawbacks, though - things can get pretty confused if there is too much noise. Still, a scheme like this is pretty cool -
Read more

Vulnerabilities in Possible Future Technology

Image
While in Vancouver for USENIX '17, I was able to attend HOTSEC '17, a co-located workshop. The workshop was set up in a way that for each security topic, there was a series of short lightning talks, and then after each series of talks, some time to discuss the presentations with the authors and other participants. The lightning talks and discussions really lent themselves to giving me a lot to think about in regards to security. One topic I found interesting is the future of ocular implants. The reason I found it interesting is because it relates back to what our lab does. Ghost Talk, for example, shows an attack on pacemakers, a biomedical implant often used today in those that need it. It also showed that a microphone could be attacked with EMI. "WALNUT: Waging Doubt on the Integrity of MEMS Accelerometers with Acoustic Injection Attacks" is another paper that shows the vulnerability of MEMS accelerometers against acoustic attacks. If current sensors already have vu
Read more

Ghost Talk

Image
This week I read the Ghost Talk Paper  ( https://spqr.eecs.umich.edu/ papers/fookune-emi-oakland13. pdf ) and  learned about Amplitude Modulation, the concept behind transmitting AM  radio waves. What's interesting is that in terms of long-distance  communication, AM was preceded by Morse code; AM radio meant that  audio, with varied tones, could finally be transmitted. As the first broadcasting method, AM waves are the simplest. The way  that Amplitude Modulation works is by looking at two frequencies: the  frequency a receiver can accept (the carrier wave) and the frequency  the receiver should output to produce the wanted sound. For Ghost  Talk, the carrier frequency is determined by the victim device's  circuitry. The carrier frequency is the frequency of the attacker's  wave sent to the device. To transmit the audio data, though, the  amplitude of the wave is varied. If the carrier wave has the right  frequency, and is modulated correctly, then the peaks of the carri
Read more