Malware Detection in Docker Containers: An Image is Worth a Thousand Logs

Malware detection is increasingly challenged by evolving techniques like obfuscation and polymorphism, limiting the effectiveness of traditional methods. Meanwhile, the widespread adoption of software containers has introduced new security challenges, including the growing threat of malicious software injection, where a container, once compromised, can serve as entry point for further cyberattacks. In this work, we address these security issues by introducing a method to identify compromised containers through machine learning analysis of their file systems. We cast the entire software containers into large RGB images via their tarball representations, and propose to use established Convolutional Neural Network architectures on a streaming, patch-based manner. To support our experiments, we release the COSOCO dataset--the first of its kind--containing 3364 large-scale RGB images of benign and compromised software containers at https://huggingface.co/datasets/k3ylabs/cosoco-image-dataset. Our method detects more malware and achieves higher F1 and Recall scores than all individual and ensembles of VirusTotal engines, demonstrating its effectiveness and setting a new standard for identifying malware-compromised software containers.

Public space security management using digital twin technologies

As the security of public spaces remains a critical issue in today's world, Digital Twin technologies have emerged in recent years as a promising solution for detecting and predicting potential future threats. The applied methodology leverages a Digital Twin of a metro station in Athens, Greece, using the FlexSim simulation software. The model encompasses points of interest and passenger flows, and sets their corresponding parameters. These elements influence and allow the model to provide reasonable predictions on the security management of the station under various scenarios. Experimental tests are conducted with different configurations of surveillance cameras and optimizations of camera angles to evaluate the effectiveness of the space surveillance setup. The results show that the strategic positioning of surveillance cameras and the adjustment of their angles significantly improves the detection of suspicious behaviors and with the use of the DT it is possible to evaluate different scenarios and find the optimal camera setup for each case. In summary, this study highlights the value of Digital Twins in real-time simulation and data-driven security management. The proposed approach contributes to the ongoing development of smart security solutions for public spaces and provides an innovative framework for threat detection and prevention.

State of play and future directions in industrial computer vision AI standards

The recent tremendous advancements in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) have also resulted into corresponding remarkable progress in the field of Computer Vision (CV), showcasing robust technological solutions in a wide range of application sectors of high industrial interest (e.g., healthcare, autonomous driving, automation, etc.). Despite the outstanding performance of CV systems in specific domains, their development and exploitation at industrial-scale necessitates, among other, the addressing of requirements related to the reliability, transparency, trustworthiness, security, safety, and robustness of the developed AI models. The latter raises the imperative need for the development of efficient, comprehensive and widely-adopted industrial standards. In this context, this study investigates the current state of play regarding the development of industrial computer vision AI standards, emphasizing on critical aspects, like model interpretability, data quality, and regulatory compliance. In particular, a systematic analysis of launched and currently developing CV standards, proposed by the main international standardization bodies (e.g. ISO/IEC, IEEE, DIN, etc.) is performed. The latter is complemented by a comprehensive discussion on the current challenges and future directions observed in this regularization endeavor.

Cross-Format Retrieval-Augmented Generation in XR with LLMs for Context-Aware Maintenance Assistance

This paper presents a detailed evaluation of a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system that integrates large language models (LLMs) to enhance information retrieval and instruction generation for maintenance personnel across diverse data formats. We assessed the performance of eight LLMs, emphasizing key metrics such as response speed and accuracy, which were quantified using BLEU and METEOR scores. Our findings reveal that advanced models like GPT-4 and GPT-4o-mini significantly outperform their counterparts, particularly when addressing complex queries requiring multi-format data integration. The results validate the system's ability to deliver timely and accurate responses, highlighting the potential of RAG frameworks to optimize maintenance operations. Future research will focus on refining retrieval techniques for these models and enhancing response generation, particularly for intricate scenarios, ultimately improving the system's practical applicability in dynamic real-world environments.

Enhancing 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Vehicles Based on Synthetic Virtual Environment Analysis

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) use natural images and videos as input to understand the real world by overlaying and inferring digital elements, facilitating proactive detection in an effort to assure safety. A crucial aspect of this process is real-time, accurate object recognition through automatic scene analysis. While traditional methods primarily concentrate on 2D object detection, exploring 3D object detection, which involves projecting 3D bounding boxes into the three-dimensional environment, holds significance and can be notably enhanced using the AR ecosystem. This study examines an AI model's ability to deduce 3D bounding boxes in the context of real-time scene analysis while producing and evaluating the model's performance and processing time, in the virtual domain, which is then applied to AVs. This work also employs a synthetic dataset that includes artificially generated images mimicking various environmental, lighting, and spatiotemporal states. This evaluation is oriented in handling images featuring objects in diverse weather conditions, captured with varying camera settings. These variations pose more challenging detection and recognition scenarios, which the outcomes of this work can help achieve competitive results under most of the tested conditions.

Applied Federated Model Personalisation in the Industrial Domain: A Comparative Study

The time-consuming nature of training and deploying complicated Machine and Deep Learning (DL) models for a variety of applications continues to pose significant challenges in the field of Machine Learning (ML). These challenges are particularly pronounced in the federated domain, where optimizing models for individual nodes poses significant difficulty. Many methods have been developed to tackle this problem, aiming to reduce training expenses and time while maintaining efficient optimisation. Three suggested strategies to tackle this challenge include Active Learning, Knowledge Distillation, and Local Memorization. These methods enable the adoption of smaller models that require fewer computational resources and allow for model personalization with local insights, thereby improving the effectiveness of current models. The present study delves into the fundamental principles of these three approaches and proposes an advanced Federated Learning System that utilises different Personalisation methods towards improving the accuracy of AI models and enhancing user experience in real-time NG-IoT applications, investigating the efficacy of these techniques in the local and federated domain. The results of the original and optimised models are then compared in both local and federated contexts using a comparison analysis. The post-analysis shows encouraging outcomes when it comes to optimising and personalising the models with the suggested techniques.

A Closer Look at Data Augmentation Strategies for Finetuning-Based Low/Few-Shot Object Detection

Current methods for low- and few-shot object detection have primarily focused on enhancing model performance for detecting objects. One common approach to achieve this is by combining model finetuning with data augmentation strategies. However, little attention has been given to the energy efficiency of these approaches in data-scarce regimes. This paper seeks to conduct a comprehensive empirical study that examines both model performance and energy efficiency of custom data augmentations and automated data augmentation selection strategies when combined with a lightweight object detector. The methods are evaluated in three different benchmark datasets in terms of their performance and energy consumption, and the Efficiency Factor is employed to gain insights into their effectiveness considering both performance and efficiency. Consequently, it is shown that in many cases, the performance gains of data augmentation strategies are overshadowed by their increased energy usage, necessitating the development of more energy efficient data augmentation strategies to address data scarcity.

Enhanced Deep Learning Methodologies and MRI Selection Techniques for Dementia Diagnosis in the Elderly Population

Dementia, a debilitating neurological condition affecting millions worldwide, presents significant diagnostic challenges. In this work, we introduce a novel methodology for the classification of demented and non-demented elderly patients using 3D brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. Our approach features a unique technique for selectively processing MRI slices, focusing on the most relevant brain regions and excluding less informative sections. This methodology is complemented by a confidence-based classification committee composed of three custom deep learning models: Dem3D ResNet, Dem3D CNN, and Dem3D EfficientNet. These models work synergistically to enhance decision-making accuracy, leveraging their collective strengths. Tested on the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies(OASIS) dataset, our method achieved an impressive accuracy of 94.12%, surpassing existing methodologies. Furthermore, validation on the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset confirmed the robustness and generalizability of our approach. The use of explainable AI (XAI) techniques and comprehensive ablation studies further substantiate the effectiveness of our techniques, providing insights into the decision-making process and the importance of our methodology. This research offers a significant advancement in dementia diagnosis, providing a highly accurate and efficient tool for clinical applications.

Enhancing Performance for Highly Imbalanced Medical Data via Data Regularization in a Federated Learning Setting

The increased availability of medical data has significantly impacted healthcare by enabling the application of machine / deep learning approaches in various instances. However, medical datasets are usually small and scattered across multiple providers, suffer from high class-imbalance, and are subject to stringent data privacy constraints. In this paper, the application of a data regularization algorithm, suitable for learning under high class-imbalance, in a federated learning setting is proposed. Specifically, the goal of the proposed method is to enhance model performance for cardiovascular disease prediction by tackling the class-imbalance that typically characterizes datasets used for this purpose, as well as by leveraging patient data available in different nodes of a federated ecosystem without compromising their privacy and enabling more resource sensitive allocation. The method is evaluated across four datasets for cardiovascular disease prediction, which are scattered across different clients, achieving improved performance. Meanwhile, its robustness under various hyperparameter settings, as well as its ability to adapt to different resource allocation scenarios, is verified.

StatAvg: Mitigating Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning for Intrusion Detection Systems

Federated learning (FL) is a decentralized learning technique that enables participating devices to collaboratively build a shared Machine Leaning (ML) or Deep Learning (DL) model without revealing their raw data to a third party. Due to its privacy-preserving nature, FL has sparked widespread attention for building Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) within the realm of cybersecurity. However, the data heterogeneity across participating domains and entities presents significant challenges for the reliable implementation of an FL-based IDS. In this paper, we propose an effective method called Statistical Averaging (StatAvg) to alleviate non-independently and identically (non-iid) distributed features across local clients' data in FL. In particular, StatAvg allows the FL clients to share their individual data statistics with the server, which then aggregates this information to produce global statistics. The latter are shared with the clients and used for universal data normalisation. It is worth mentioning that StatAvg can seamlessly integrate with any FL aggregation strategy, as it occurs before the actual FL training process. The proposed method is evaluated against baseline approaches using datasets for network and host Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered IDS. The experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of StatAvg in mitigating non-iid feature distributions across the FL clients compared to the baseline methods.