Search

The upgrade of energy infrastructures by the incorporation of communication and Internet technologies might introduce new risks for the security and for the smooth operation of electricity networks. Exploitation of the potential vulnerabilities of the heterogeneous systems used in smart energy grids (SEGs) may lead to the loss of control of critical electronic devices and, moreover, to the interception of confidential information. This may result in the disruption of essential services or even in total power failures. Addressing security issues that can ensure the confidentiality, the integrity, and availability of energy information is the primary objective for a transition to a new energy shape. This research paper presents an innovative system that can effectively offer SEG cybersecurity. It employs soft computing approaches, fuzzy cognitive maps, and a Mamdani fuzzy inference system in order to model overall security level. Three of the 27 scenarios considered herein have low overall security level, 21 of them have middle overall security, whereas only 3 are characterized as secure. The system automates the strategic planning of high security standards, as it allows a thorough audit of digital systems related to potential infrastructures and it contributes towards accurate decision-making in cases of threats. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is a fact that more and more users are adopting the online digital payment systems via mobile devices for everyday use. This attracts powerful gangs of cybercriminals, which use sophisticated and highly intelligent types of malware to broaden their attacks. Malicious software is designed to run quietly and to remain unsolved for a long time. It manages to take full control of the device and to communicate (via the Tor network) with its Command & Control servers of fast-flux botnets' networks to which it belongs. This is done to achieve the malicious objectives of the botmasters. This paper proposes the development of the computational intelligence anti-malware framework (CIantiMF) which is innovative, ultra-fast and has low requirements. It runs under the android operating system (OS) and its reasoning is based on advanced computational intelligence approaches. The selection of the android OS was based on its popularity and on the number of critical applications available for it. The CIantiMF uses two advanced technology extensions for the ART java virtual machine which is the default in the recent versions of android. The first is the smart anti-malware extension, which can recognize whether the java classes of an android application are benign or malicious using an optimized multi-layer perceptron. The optimization is done by the employment of the biogeography-based optimizer algorithm. The second is the Tor online traffic identification extension, which is capable of achieving malware localization, Tor traffic identification and botnets prohibition, with the use of the online sequential extreme learning machine algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to protect the environment and biodiversity and to safeguard public health require the development of timely and reliable methods for the identification of particularly dangerous invasive species, before they become regulators of ecosystems. These species appear to be morphologically similar, despite their strong biological differences, something that complicates their identification process. Additionally, the localization of the broader space of dispersion and the development of invasive species are considered to be of critical importance in the effort to take proper management measures. The aim of this research is to create an advanced computational intelligence system for the automatic recognition, of invasive or another unknown species. The identification is performed based on the analysis of environmental DNA by employing machine learning methods. More specifically, this research effort proposes a hybrid bio-inspired computational intelligence detection approach. It employs extreme learning machines combined with an evolving Izhikevich spiking neuron model for the automated identification of the invasive fish species ' Lagocephalus sceleratus' extremely dangerous for human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of air quality and the continuous monitoring of air pollution levels are important subjects of the environmental science and research. This problem actually has real impact in the human health and quality of life. The determination of the conditions which favor high concentration of pollutants and most of all the timely forecast of such cases is really crucial, as it facilitates the imposition of specific protection and prevention actions by civil protection. This research paper discusses an innovative threefold intelligent hybrid system of combined machine learning algorithms HISYCOL (henceforth). First, it deals with the correlation of the conditions under which high pollutants concentrations emerge. On the other hand, it proposes and presents an ensemble system using combination of machine learning algorithms capable of forecasting the values of air pollutants. What is really important and gives this modeling effort a hybrid nature is the fact that it uses clustered datasets. Moreover, this approach improves the accuracy of existing forecasting models by using unsupervised machine learning to cluster the data vectors and trace hidden knowledge. Finally, it employs a Mamdani fuzzy inference system for each air pollutant in order to forecast even more effectively its concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]