Showing posts with label Detection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detection. Show all posts

June 26, 2019

Amazing - They Go In And See

Had my routine colonoscopy this morning. 

It is so amazing that they can go in with camera and everything. 

Look around and if necessary, cut out anything bad. 

Years ago, people just felt sick or pain and maybe saw some symptoms from outside.

But they had no idea what was happening inside. 

So grateful to G-d for the technology and doctors that can make sure all is okay. 

We are truly living in miraculous times. 

They even send you home with some pictures afterward.

It's interesting to see, but maybe a little TMI. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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February 21, 2018

From Malware To Malevolent People

So in virus protection on the computer, there are 2 common ways antivirus software works:

1) Signature Detection - There are known patterns of viruses and the antivirus software looks for a match against one of these. 

2) Behavior Detection - There are known patterns of normal behavior on the computer, and the antivirus software looks for deviations from this. 

Each has certain weaknesses:

- With signature detection, if there is a zero-day exploit (i.e. a virus that is new and therefore which has no known signature) then it will not be caught by a blacklist of known viruses.

- While with behavior detection, some viruses that are designed to look like normal network or application behavior will not be caught by heuristic/algorithm-based detection methods. 

For defense-in-depth then, we can see why employing a combination of both methods would work best to protect from malware. 

It's interesting that these same techniques for recognizing bad computer actors can be used for identifying bad or dangerous people. 

We can look for known signatures/patterns of evil, abusive, and violent behaviors and identify those people according to their bad actions.

Similarly, we generally know what "normal" looks like (within a range of standard deviations, of course) and people who behave outside those bounds could be considered as potentially dangerous to themselves or others. 

Yes, we can't jump to conclusions with people -- we don't want to misjudge anyone or be overly harsh with them, but at the same time, we are human beings and we have a survival instinct. 

So whether we're dealing with malware or malevolent individuals, looking at patterns of bad actors and significant deviations from the normal are helpful in protecting your data and your person. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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July 19, 2013

With Surgical Precision


This is awesome--the iKnife ("Intelligent" knife) for cutting away cancer, can also detect the cancerous cells. 

I had previously heard about dogs being able to sniff cancers such as lung, ovarian, and skin--but never a surgical knife doing this. 

With the iKnife, a surgeon can use a electrosurgical knife to cut/burn away cancerous tissue, but even better yet, this knife sucks away the smoke containing the vaporized tissue to a mass spectrometer that analyzes the particles and is said to be 100% accurate (so far) in detecting cancerous tissue (from those that are normal).

This is critical because it can be lifesaving in guiding surgeons not to miss any of the cancer (and therefore also helps avoid repeat surgeries) as well as not removing unnecessary tissue that is not cancerous. 

Dogs can help alert us to hidden cancers within and the iKnife can help remove them with greater precision and success. 

Hopefully, with G-d's help, one day we won't need either anymore. ;-)


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January 26, 2013

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire


To catch a terrorist, you have to think like a terrorist or at least be able to get behind their lies and deception.

Terrorist want to gain entry, surveil their targets, plan their attack, assemble their weapons and tactics, avoid their pursuers, and execute maximum human, economic, and political damage. 

To succeed, terrorists have to use lies and deceit to make their way through all the obstacles that the good guys put up.

Wired Magazine (February 2013) addresses some new interrogation technology being tested by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to catch the lies and the liars. 

First of all, "people are really good at lying, and it's incredibly hard to tell when we're doing it."

Moreover, most people "lie 10 times a day," so it is routine and comes naturally to them. 

In terms of detecting lies, we are not very good at it--in fact, we're just better than chance--able to tell when someone is lying only 54% of the time.
Apparently, even with polygraph exams--their success is dependent more on the experience and finesse of the examiner and less on the polygraph tool. 

However, with new research and development, DHS has come up with an automated interrogator--that enhances the success of catching a liar by combining multiple detection technologies. 

The "interrogator bot" has three different sensors in use by the Embodied Avatar Kiosk.

- Infrared camera--"records eye movements and pupil dilation at up to 250 times per second--the stress of lying tends to cause the pupils to dilate"

- High-definition video camera--"captures fidgets such as shrugging, nodding, and scratching, which tend to increase during a deceptive statement"

- Microphone--"collects vocal data, because lies often come with minute changes in pitch" as well as "hesitation, changes in tempo and intonation, and spoken errors"

In the future, a additional sensors may be added for:

- Weight-sensing platform--to "measure leg and foot shifts or toe scrunches"

- 3-D camera--to "track the movements of a person's entire body"

Aside from getting better deception-detection results from multiplying the sensing techniques, the interrogation kiosk benefits from communicating in multiple languages and being "consistent, tireless, and susceptible to neither persuasion not bribery."

Another very cool feature being tested is tan interrogation avatar that actually resembles the person being interrogated using a camera and morphing software and making it look uncanny and "disturbing" at the same time--this can be quite familiar, disarming and unnerving.

By aggregating data points from many types of sensors and using behavioral analysis as a first line of defense followed by human questioning of those found to be lying, homeland security can proverbially light a fire under the pants of would be infiltrators and terrorists--and catch them before they make it to their next target. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Cosmic Jans)

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