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Cryptocurrencies have now become an emerging blockchain-based payment technology; among them, bitcoin is the best known and most widely used. Users on these networks are pseudo-anonymous, meaning that while all transactions from an address are transparent and searchable by anyone, the users' true identities are not directly revealed; to preserve their privacy, users often use many different addresses. In recent years, some studies have been conducted regarding analyzing clusters of bitcoin addresses that, according to certain heuristics, belong to the same entity. This capability provides law enforcement with valuable information for investigating illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies. Clustering methods that rely on a single heuristic often fail to accurately and comprehensively cluster multiple addresses. This paper proposes Bitcoin Address Clustering based on multiple Heuristics (BACH): a tool that uses three different clustering heuristics to identify clusters of bitcoin addresses, which are displayed through a three-dimensional graph. The results lead to several analyses, including a comparative evaluation of WalletExplorer, which is a similar address clustering tool. BACH introduces the innovative feature of visualizing the internal structure of clusters in a graphical format. The study also shows how the combined use of different heuristics provides better results and more complete clusters than those obtained from their individual use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that "each counts for one," we cannot derive the conclusion that "more count for more" or its negation. The familiar arguments from equality to aggregation presuppose more than equality: the Kamm/Scanlon "Balancing Argument" rests on what social choice theorists call "(Positive) Responsiveness," Kamm's "Aggregation Argument" assumes that "equal" lives are fungible, and Hsieh et al. have it that spreading goods broadly best approximates equality. In each case, the crucial premise is not equality itself but a further idea that Taurek, I argue, can safely reject. I conclude with a conjecture: there is no theory–neutral argument that settles the question of whether the numbers count. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Teaching faculty request timely feedback from residents to improve their skills. Yet even with anonymous processes, this upward feedback can be difficult to obtain as residents raise concerns about identification and repercussions. Objective To examine faculty perception of the quality and content of feedback from residents after increasing anonymity and sacrificing timeliness. Methods Between 2011 and 2017, an associate program director at a large internal medicine residency program met briefly with each resident individually to obtain feedback about their teaching faculty shortly after their rotation. To improve anonymity, residents were promised their feedback would not be released until they graduated. In 2019, all feedback was collated and released at one time to faculty. We administered 3 timed, voluntary, anonymous, 36-item closed-ended surveys to faculty asking about the content and value, and to self-identify whether the feedback was praise, constructive, or criticism. Results Exactly 189 faculty participated with 140 completing all 3 surveys (74.1% response rate). Faculty reported this feedback content to be of higher quality (81.0%, 81 of 100) and quantity (82.4%, 84 of 102) in contrast to prior feedback. More than 85.4% (88 of 103) of faculty agreed this feedback was more specific. Faculty identified less praise (median 35.0% vs median 50.0%, P<.001) and more negative constructive feedback (median 20.0% vs median 5.0%, P<.001) compared to prior feedback. More than 82% (116 of 140) of faculty reported it would change their behavior, but 3 months after receiving the feedback, only 63.6% (89 or 140) felt the same way (P<.001). Faculty were divided on the necessity of a time delay, with 41.4% (58 of 140) believing it reduced the feedback's value. Despite the delay, 32.1% (45 of 140) felt they could identify residents. Conclusions Offering a substantial delay in feedback delivery increased anonymity and enabled residents to furnish more nuanced and constructive comments; however, faculty opinions diverged on whether this postponement was valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to his biblical exegesis and contemplative treatises, Richard Rolle was arguably the first named lyric poet writing in Middle English and certainly the first to achieve a wide readership. Yet, in part because his poems can be tied to a larger authorial program, they have tended to be read apart from other Middle English religious lyrics, interpreted instead in terms of the stages of contemplative progress outlined in his prose, with different lyrics offering meditative material appropriate to different stages. This essay offers a fresh approach to the hermit's poetry, focusing on a series of lyrics that circulated apart from his treatises, and considering, in particular, their place in a single manuscript, London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 853. Rather than showing any concern for Rolle's status as an elite contemplative, the scribe of Lambeth 853 copied these poems without attribution, and he seems to have been drawn to them because of their continuities with the larger collection of verse he was assembling. This essay traces the various formal features and intertextual reflexes shared by the poems assembled in Lambeth 853, thereby recovering a new facet of Rolle's appeal as poet, the degree to which he could be read within a tradition of specifically pastoral verse. Indeed, the Lambeth compiler seems above all to be highlighting Rolle's place in this larger, preexisting, and anonymous body of verse, one which the hermit adapted to suit his own contemplative purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current solutions that rely on a single-server architecture have privacy, anonymity, integrity, and confidentiality limitations. Blockchain-based solutions can address some of these issues but face challenges regulating behaviour and protecting access policy privacy. This study proposes a new approach to securing a smart home environment to overcome these limitations.The proposed architecture is based on a group signature scheme, which allows multiple IoT devices to securely exchange keys and authenticate each other without needing a central authority. Our experimental results indicate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed architecture and provide insights into its security and privacy features compared to existing IoT authentication methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is primarily concerned with the dialectics between dividuality--the Deleuzian concept for the fragmentation of the subject into discrete sets of separate information--and individuality in microfiction. After contextualizing the emergence of microfiction in the digital age, it analyzes the widespread use of anonymity in this genre in relation to the modes of data-based subjectivation. Its central claim is that recent examples of microfiction display a modulatory tension between categorical identities and individuality: while many texts present increasingly anonymized characters, who have less and less agency and are caught in tight but overcrowded spaces, they also mourn the disappearance of the individual into the anonymity of the type. The article develops this claim in four sections: the first contextualizes microfiction in the "world of the now" that shapes the fourth industrial revolution, in order to reconsider brevity; the second traces the development of microfiction in parallel with the impact of technologies upon subjectivation; the third section addresses the vulnerability of the individual in the divided but overcrowded space of onlife and the related choice of "threshold sites" as a favorite setting in microfiction; finally, the concluding part explores how several texts articulate anxieties about individuality and the inaccessibility of the data double as two key elements that shape characterization. The Lacanian model for the primary alienation of the subject has been adopted as a convenient structure to grasp the impact of the digital translation of the gaze upon subjectivation. Overall, this article suggests a frame to understand the development of microfiction in light of innovations and disruptions that have been silently shaping the last four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anonymous gamete donation creates a specific conflict between human rights and public interests under Article 8 of the ECHR. This was first assessed in the ECtHR's landmark decision in Gauvin-Fournis and Silliau v. France of 7 September 2023. This article critically analyses this judgment, taking into account the European legal framework for anonymous gamete donation, the recommendations of the competent authorities and the previous case law of the ECtHR on the right to know one's biological origin as an integral part of one's identity that is protected under the right to private and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Margarethe 'Meta' Wedekind was one of the 'Universitätsmamsellen', a group of eighteenth–century German women who had access to a privileged academic education. In addition to numerous translations, in 1784 Wedekind published the epistolary novel Maria: Eine Geschichte in Briefen. What is striking about this text is that both its 'author' and 'editor' remain anonymous. This article argues that Meta Wedekind resorts to two main strategies to publish the novel: the so-called 'Herausgeberfiktion', and anonymity. Furthermore, this type of publication was likely inspired by Sophie La Roche's famous novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "In Her Own Hand: Female Agency around 1800" from the Publications of the English Goethe Society explores the concept of female agency in the literary world during the 18th century. It discusses the challenges faced by women writers, such as the association of female agency with female authorship and the difficulties in preserving and editing their literary works. The text highlights the contributions of various women writers, including Ottilie von Goethe, Wilhelmine Müller, and Emilie von Berlepsch, shedding light on their strategies to navigate the male-dominated literary landscape. The article also delves into the role of women like Anna Maria Mozart in supporting their families and advancing their careers, showcasing the diverse ways in which women exercised agency in the literary and artistic spheres during that period. [Extracted from the article]

This article proposes a novel method for managing usage counters within an anonymous credential system, addressing the limitation of traditional anonymous credentials in tracking repeated use. The method takes advantage of blockchain technology through Smart Contracts deployed on the Ethereum network to enforce a predetermined maximum number of uses for a given credential. Users retain control over increments by providing zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) demonstrating private key possession and agreement on the increment value. This approach prevents replay attacks and ensures transparency and security. A prototype implementation on a private Ethereum blockchain demonstrates the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method, paving the way for its potential deployment in real-world applications requiring both anonymity and usage tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information security refers to 'the practice of defending information from unauthorised access'. Information security practices include everyday activities such as protecting your bank details, or keeping your workplace logins secure. Despite increasingly restrictive approaches to research ethics, academia continues to lag behind journalism when it comes to best practice with regards to information security. This article discusses information security as it pertains to qualitative and especially ethnographic research into crime and deviance. In doing so, the article addresses a gap in the methodological literature by drawing on lessons and real-world examples from journalism, academia and activism, in order to offer guidance for researchers seeking to maintain information security in a digital, networked social world. The article proceeds in three parts. First, the article considers what information researchers might want to protect, who they might want to protect it from and what the consequences might be if they failed to do so (an exercise known as 'threat modelling'). The different powers, resources and capacities of, and threats posed by, state actors such as the police and intelligence agencies, as well as an array of non-state actors, are considered. Second, the article outlines some general principles of information security and how they might apply to ethnographic research into crime and deviance. Third, the article discusses a range of practical considerations when it comes to using mobile phones (cell phones), social media, passwords and encryption in the course of researching crime and deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers an interpretation of the canonical history of strolling as a non-economic practice, that is, as a practice free of purpose and means. I consider strolling as a state of mind that discloses abundance in a similar way as rationality discloses scarcity. I inquire into the multiple facets of this state of mind by re-reading three phases in its literary and cultural history: the early modern artist-stroller of the nineteenth-century panoramic literature that finds its peak in Charles Baudelaire; the high modern consumer-stroller as described in the inter-war period, notably in the work of Walter Benjamin; and the late modern subversive stroller that is re-discovered in the mid-twentieth century by the Situationist Guy Debord among others. This interpretation both sheds light on the social preconditions of economic rationality as an organizing principle of a market society, as well as the potential to step out of this principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced anonymous communication schemes have been proposed to protect the privacy of network users, enabling them to communicate anonymously on the Internet. However, this can lead to the issue of misuse of anonymous communication. Most anonymous communication systems lack accountability mechanisms, allowing malicious users to engage in illegal activities on the network without facing consequences. This presents difficulties for maintaining social stability and promoting anonymous communication. To address these challenges, we develop an accountable anonymous broadcast system that combines group signatures and a secret-shared shuffle protocol. This system allows honest users to anonymously publish messages, while the identities of users who publish illegal messages will be exposed. We employ batch verification to reduce the time required for verifying group signatures, which in turn reduces system latency. Finally, we implement the system and conduct performance evaluations to demonstrate its practicality. Compared to previous accountable anonymity mechanisms, our system can directly trace and hold malicious users accountable without compromising the privacy of honest users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the activism of Silent Megaphone, a Korean feminist artist group. By examining the experiences of Silent Megaphone members, their artworks, and exhibitions, this study argues that the sexist regulations of online platforms drove the meme-producers to enter the realm of feminist art, transforming them from anonymous women to feminist artists with authorship. This transition allowed them to rearrange the aims and styles of their activism, appropriate the practices of online and offline realms, and connect with the broader feminist artist community, establishing a network encompassing both their online feminist group and an unexpected cohort of feminist artists spanning generations, and creating a safe space for their fellow feminists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face de-identification has always been a focal point in privacy-preserving research. Most existing de-identification methods focus only on the anonymization phase, neglecting the importance of deanonymization. Moreover, existing reversible de-identification methods are unsatisfactory in terms of diversity and manipulability. To overcome these limitations, we propose MRDD-FID, short for Manipulable, Reversible and Diversified De-identification via Face Identity Disentanglement. The framework realizes individual modification of identity representations while keeping non-identity representations unchanged through face identity disentanglement. Randomized passwords are used for identity modification, thus ensuring complete randomness in the modification process. By utilizing Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for training, we effectively enhance the realism and diversity of de-identification. Furthermore, MRDD-FID can precisely control the degree and direction of de-identification based on user-specified strengths and styles without compromising the image quality. Compared to existing methods, MRDD-FID offers higher flexibility and security. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our method in terms of anonymity, diversity, reversibility and manipulability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The smart grid (SG) is an efficient and reliable framework capable of controlling computers, automation, new technologies, and devices. Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is a crucial part of the SG, facilitating two-way communication between users and service providers (SPs). Computation, storage, and communication are extremely limited as the AMI's device is typically deployed outdoors and connected to an open network. Therefore, an authentication and key agreement protocol is necessary to ensure the security and confidentiality of communications. Existing research still does not meet the anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, and resource-limited requirements of the SG environment. To address this issue, we advance a lightweight authentication and key agreement scheme based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). The security of the proposed protocol is rigorously proven under the random oracle model (ROM), and was verified by a ProVerif tool. Additionally, performance comparisons validate that the proposed protocol provides enhanced security features at the lowest computation and communication costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current authentication schemes based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) still face issues such as high computation costs, low efficiency, and security assurance difficulty. Therefore, we propose a secure and efficient authentication scheme (SEAS) for large-scale IoT devices based on ZKP. In the initialization phase, the trusted authority creates prerequisites for device traceability and system security. Then, we propose a new registration method to ensure device anonymity. In the identity tracing and revocation phase, we revoke the real identity of abnormal devices by decrypting and updating group public keys, avoiding their access and reducing revocation costs. In the authentication phase, we check the arithmetic relationship between blind certificates, proofs, and other random data. We propose a new anonymous batch authentication method to effectively reduce computation costs, enhance authentication efficiency, and guarantee device authentication security. Security analysis and experimental results show that an SEAS can ensure security and effectively reduce verification time and energy costs. Its security and performance exceed existing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Addressing hazing within the U.S. Military has become a critical concern to safeguard the well-being of service members; recent attempts to assess hazing prevalence in the military have been unsuccessful due to under representative data. Methods To delve into the hazing climate and reporting culture at Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, 227 individuals took part in an anonymous online survey. The survey collected demographics and insights on hazing attitudes and behaviors, perceptions of group experiences including hazing/non-hazing activities, views on leadership, familiarity and experiences with reporting procedures, and bystander intervention. Results The findings echoed existing literature: while only 17.2% admitted to experiencing hazing, a striking 70.3% acknowledged involvement in specific hazing behaviors. Only 40% of participants who acknowledged experiencing hazing (n  = 35) disclosed that they reported or confided in someone about the incident. Responses highlight reporting hurdles including concerns about anonymity, confidence in the reporting process, leadership reactions to reports, and the normalization of these events as tradition. Discussion Distinct elements of military culture, such as the hierarchical chain of command, loyalty to the brotherhood/sisterhood, and the emphasis on resilience, likely amplify these responses. This study adds to the mounting evidence showcasing gaps in assessing hazing within the U.S. Military. It emphasizes the necessity for a comprehensive hazing prevention program. Presently, prevention relies on mandatory training, often integrated into safety briefings or harassment workshops. However, service members require further assistance in recognizing, rejecting, and reporting instances of hazing despite these trainings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ethical considerations of teachers and leaders conducting research in their own workplaces. It highlights the potential benefits of research, but also raises concerns about researcher bias, anonymity, coercion, permission and consent, and power dynamics. The article suggests ways to address these issues and foster a collaborative research culture in educational institutions. It emphasizes the importance of following ethical guidelines, obtaining permission and consent, and involving the school or institution in the research process. While the suggestions provided are not exhaustive, they offer a starting point for researchers to ensure ethical practices. By conducting research ethically, there is potential to bridge the gap between theory and practice in schools and support school improvement. [Extracted from the article]

This essay discusses the language strategies deployed in twenty-first century works by three Black Canadian poets that engage with the archive of slavery (Sylvia D. Hamilton, charles c. smith and M. NourbeSe Philip) and reads them as performing a counter-pedagogy of cruelty against African-descended peoples. The analysis focuses on the politics of identification pursued by these poets in order to bring back the memory of enslaved Black subjects into the realm of the 'human', and particularly the recurrent device of naming or renaming as a way to counter one of the most pervasive dehumanizing practices of slavery, the erasure of one's past and the imposition of anonymity. By means of this linguistic resource they achieve common aims: restoring dignity to the enslaved, constructing an alternative site of memorialization, and dismantling hegemonic narratives of Blackness in the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this survey, we aimed to provide the description of previous oocyte donors' profile in a Belgian tertiary fertility hospital clinic. The research question is as follows: could certain aspects be changed or improved, according to previous oocyte donors? The final purpose is to boost adherence to future oocyte donation (OD) programs, given the large gap between supply and demand. Methods: We set up an observational cross-sectional study of oocyte donors who were recruited in a tertiary referral hospital. Participants were asked to join an anonymous online survey with questions about demographic and reproductive variables, reasons to start or discontinue OD, satisfaction rate, experience, and attitude towards presumed anonymity. Results: A total of 218 women were eligible to join the study, with a response rate of 49% (108/218). The emerging profile of the oocyte donor is a well-educated (102/108 with at least a high school degree), employed (86/108) woman in her thirties. Altruism and solidarity were the main drivers of their choice (105/108), and a general permissive attitude towards disclosure of their personal information to the recipient (60/108) was registered. In case of negative experience or discontinuation, concerns regarding pain management and specific long-lasting psychological support were expressed (8/20). Conclusions: Our findings suggest the need to improve pain relief and to offer psychological support even beyond ending the donation process. These interventions could improve both participation and adherence to OD programs, ensuring an autonomous and free choice while avoiding any risk of exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barnett responds to three articles that put the thought of Søren Kierkegaard in conversation with modern popular media. He argues that each of these pieces demonstrates that Kierkegaard's criticism of the burgeoning free press remains relevant today, particularly in the areas of journalistic practice, mental health, and political responsibility. At the same time, however, Barnett wonders if the radical nature of the Dane's critique has been fully considered. For Kierkegaard, in other words, it is not just that popular media have flaws in need of correction; it is that the media constitute "the evil principle in the modern world." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Søren Kierkegaard was engaged with the press in a variety of ways throughout his authorship. Although studies of Kierkegaard's interactions with the public press of his time have largely focused on his dispute with the satirical newspaper, Corsaren, in this paper I examine his first engagement with the press—a mostly anonymous newspaper dispute with the Danish social activist, Orla Lehmann, about the freedom of the press in Denmark—as a lens through which to understand his thoughts on the press in general, on anonymous authorship in the newspapers and otherwise, and the ethical and religious significance Kierkegaard sees in the methods we employ, including anonymity, when we engage one another in public writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of blockchain technology has revolutionized Internet-of-Thing (IoT) systems offering immutable and transparent ledger mechanisms. However, this transformative technology has also brought significant challenges related to user privacy. Though the existing solutions offer various privacy enrichment in blockchain systems through cryptographic methods, the problems of deanonymization (the issue of revealing users' identities) and linkability of transactions still persist. Furthermore, recent reported news also shows privacy leakages in blockchain systems. Thus, we require a comprehensive privacy-assured blockchain framework to address the above-mentioned problems. In this paper, we introduce a novel privacy-preserving framework for blockchain transactions along with private information retrieval (PIR) to combat the above-mentioned privacy issues in blockchains. We call our proposed approach "PRIvacy-ensured framework for Blockchain trANsactions with pIr (PRIBANI)". PRIBANI uses randomizing ring signatures, Public key Encryption-based Keyword Search (PEKS), and PIR techniques to protect the privacy of the user and the history of the transaction data. We run a set of experiments on our proposed PRIBANI to evaluate the privacy attainment of the framework based on user anonymity, transaction anonymity, and unlinkability. We also compare PRIBANI with state-of-the-art models and show that PRIBANI gives a better throughput with an average of 56 transactions per second (TPS) and incurs low latency which is approximately 5% less than the existing schemes and an average communication overhead of 3.2 kilobytes (kbytes). Overall, PRIBANI is efficient in executing privacy-ensured blockchain transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to an influential view, asserting a proposition involves undertaking some "commitment" to the truth of that proposition. But accounts of what it is for someone to be committed to the truth of a proposition are often vague or imprecise, and are rarely put to work to define assertion. This article aims to fill this gap. It offers a precise characterisation of assertoric commitment, and applies it to define assertion. On the proposed view, acquiring commitment is not sufficient for asserting: To assert, commitment must be acquired by explicitly presenting a proposition as true. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proxy signature schemes can be used in all the scenarios where a signer is not able to sign an important message. In some cases which involve a group of proxy signers, the anonymity of the proxy signer is required. We propose the first multivariate anonymous proxy signature scheme over finite field, and discuss all its security properties such as anonymity, unforgeability, verifiability, distinguishability, and undeniability. Additionally, we give a toy example to demonstrate the mathematical functioning of the proposed scheme. We compare our scheme with the existing post-quantum anonymous proxy signature scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chatbots have several features that may stimulate self-disclosure, such as accessibility, anonymity, convenience and their perceived non-judgmental nature. The aim of this study is to investigate if people disclose (more) intimate information to a chatbot, compared to a human, and to what extent this enhances their emotional well-being through feelings of relief. An experiment with a 2 (human vs. chatbot) by 2 (low empathetic vs. high empathetic) design was conducted (N  = 286). Results showed that there was no difference in the self-reported intimacy of self-disclosure between the human and chatbot conditions. Furthermore, people perceived less fear of judgment in the chatbot condition, but more trust in the human interactant compared to the chatbot interactant. Perceived anonymity was the only variable to directly impact self-disclosure intimacy. The finding that humans disclose equally intimate information to chatbots and humans is in line with the CASA paradigm, which states that people can react in a social manner to both computers and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet is like a huge iceberg and the greatness of its visible part (the surface web) has enchanted mankind so much that no legal system can claim to be able to completely control or adequately and respond to. Still, the invisible part of the Internet- which is known as the "dark web" - is also crucially important and the attention paid to this subject by national and international law is very limited. This paper focuses on dark web and tries to explain the importance and necessity of paying attention to it. By studying international and regional instruments, national legislation and legal scholarship the we aim to examine the anonymity of the dark web from the perspective of international human rights. The main research question is the following: is it possible to invoke the right of anonymity in the dark web in international human rights? It is claimed that there is not sufficient evidence to validate the existence of an independent right to anonymity in international human rights law, which fully covers all dimensions of anonymity in dark web. On the other hand, the principles of international human rights law also reject the approach of banning anonymity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the fast advancements of wireless communication, the telehealthcare platform makes it possible for patients to access healthcare services online. However, creating a secure and efficient authentication scheme for healthcare systems still presents a challenge. Several solutions have been introduced, but the majority of them are shortly found to be unable to meet some essential security standards. In this paper, we first revisit Dharminder et al.'s scheme and prove its failure to provide mutual authentication and pacient’s untraceability and its vulnerability to impersonation attacks. Furthermore, we suggest an improved RSA-based authentication scheme to mitigate the deficiencies observed in Dharminder et al.'s schema. The proposed scheme can provide mutual authentication, patients’ anonymity and untraceability and resist various types of attacks. Extensive evaluation on AVISPA proves the safeness of the proposed scheme against both passive and active attacks. Additionally, the proposed scheme is computationally and communicationally more efficient in comparison to other existing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance the security of medical data, the government and healthcare institutions must collect and analyze vast amounts of information, enabling the prompt detection of irregular patterns and timely issuance of accurate warnings. This is crucial for preventing and containing potential threats to medical data security. However, securely sharing and converting these data poses a significant challenge, particularly in open wireless access networks within healthcare settings. Proxy re-signature (PRS) offers not only signature conversion capabilities but also anonymity, safeguarding data reliability and authenticity. Nonetheless, current proxy re-signature techniques overlook the potential for algorithm substitution attacks (ASA). Therefore, we introduce a novel proxy re-signature scheme, leveraging cryptographic reverse firewall (CRF) technology, tailored specifically for the medical domain. Furthermore, we conducted rigorous security analysis and simulation experiments to validate the practical effectiveness of our scheme. This approach addresses the need for secure data sharing among various entities, including medical institutions, management centers, and research facilities, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of critical medical information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently, the prevalent environment is the Internet of things (IoT) since it can connect a large number of different gadgets in an increasingly wide range, and lead to the risk of information leakage. In addition, the field of cryptocurrency is a hot topic with many sophisticated thefts, so the progressive utilization of crypto-wallets should protect transactions from eavesdropping. Clearly, IoT could be a promising and challenging environment for quick and secure cryptocurrency exchanges. Recently, there have been several works on user authentication schemes in this environment, and they were built from highly reliable formal analysis. However, we discovered that they have several limitations, such as replays and privileged insider attacks. In this paper, we propose an enhanced version an execution time of approximately 10 milliseconds and a communication cost of 448 bytes in the authentication phase. Furthermore, only 128 bytes of user storage is suitable for IoT crypto-wallet applications. Additionally, the security of our solution is guaranteed with formal models and popular simulation tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a smart grid, collected electricity consumption periodically from smart meters allow entities to bill the customers, power company to operate the grid successfully, and users to control the use of their appliances. However, energy consumptions of users should be protected since the data provides the user's daily habit that an adversary uses the data to extract useful information about the users. Moreover, users' identities should not be disclosed to untrusted entities since the untrusted entities map identities to their real identities. In this paper, we propose a system that protects users' data privacy using multi-pseudorandom identities and a randomization technique. Moreover, the proposed work provides fast authentication for smart meters to send their readings to data aggregators. Furthermore, the proposed work is based on consortium blockchain to eliminate a single point of failure and provides transparency of messages and operations. In addition, we use dynamic billing and pricing mechanism for the users to see their bills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines and compares online incivility on China's Weibo and the U.S.'s X (Twitter) amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, aiming to unravel how different cultural and geopolitical contexts influence online incivility and identify factors that may influence the occurrence of online incivility in different national contexts. This study collected and analyzed over 80,000 social media posts concerning the Russia-Ukraine conflict. By employing machine learning methods and moderation tests, this study compares online incivility in different country contexts. Twitter and Weibo show different level of online incivility across eight months in the discussion of Russia-Ukraine war. Conflict frame and negative sentiment both positively predict online incivility on Twitter and Weibo and these two factors both show higher prediction power on Twitter than on Weibo. This study highlights the necessity for platforms like X (Twitter) and Weibo to refine their moderation systems to address the predictors of online incivility, particularly negative sentiment and conflict framing. This study provides evidence that cultural differences significantly impact online communication patterns and norms. It also finds that non-anonymous users might exhibit more uncivil behavior in politically charged discussions, seeking social approval. This research is one of the few studies to compare online incivility and its impact factors between China and the United States social media platforms. It shows how cultural differences influence the prevalence and predictors of online incivility and distinguishes the roles of negative sentiment and conflict framing in fostering incivility, with novel findings that challenge conventional beliefs about the impact of user anonymity on online discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The group fuzzy extractor allows group users to extract and reproduce group cryptographic keys from their individual non-uniform random sources. It can be easily used in group-oriented cryptographic applications. However, current group fuzzy extractors are not dynamic, i.e. they spend a large cost when dealing with user revocation. In this work, we propose the formal definition and construction of dynamic group fuzzy extractor (DGFE) to address this issue. For the revocation, DGFE allows unrevoked group users to reproduce updated group keys from the existing group help data. Meanwhile, it prevents any revoked group user from generating new group keys using the previously authorized individual help data. We propose a DGFE construction based on the revocable group signature. Furthermore, we give formal proofs of reusability, anonymity and traceability of our construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of a society that uses a voting rule to choose a subset from a given set of objects (candidates, binary issues, or alike). We assume that voters' preferences over subsets of objects are separable: adding an object to a set leads to a better set if and only if the object is good (as a singleton set, the object is better than the empty set). A voting rule is strategy-proof if no voter benefits by not revealing its preferences truthfully and it is false-name-proof if no voter benefits by submitting several votes under other identities. We characterize all voting rules that satisfy false-name-proofness, strategy-proofness, and ontoness as the class of voting rules in which an object is chosen if it has either at least one vote in every society or a unanimous vote in every society. To do this, we first prove that if a voting rule is false-name-proof, strategy-proof, and onto, then the identities of the voters are not important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are often directly authenticated by the gateways within the network. In complex and large systems, IoT devices may be connected to the gateway through another device in the network. In such a scenario, new device should be authenticated with the gateway through the intermediate device. To address this issue, an authentication process is proposed in this paper for IoT-enabled healthcare systems. This approach performs a privacy-preserving mutual authentication between the gateway and an IoT device through intermediate devices, which are already authenticated by the gateway. The proposed approach relies on the session key established during gateway-intermediate device authentication. To emphasizes lightweight and efficient system, the proposed approach employs lightweight cryptographic operations, such as XOR, concatenation, and hash functions within IoT networks. This approach goes beyond the traditional device-to-device authentication, allowing authentication to propagate across multiple devices or nodes in the network. The proposed work establishes a secure session between an authorized device and a gateway, preventing unauthorized devices from accessing healthcare systems. The security of the protocol is validated through a thorough analysis using the AVISPA tool, and its performance is evaluated against existing schemes, demonstrating significantly lower communication and computation costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "Seeking a Research Ethics Covenant in the Social Sciences" by Will C. van den Hoonaard. The book argues that the current ethics framework in social sciences, developed under a biomedical model, is not suitable for qualitative research. The author suggests the need for a new research ethics covenant that is better suited to the priorities and concerns of research in dynamic, community contexts. The book identifies four main issues with the current ethics framework: pervasive audit culture, biomedical framework of ethics, uncritical application of this framework in social science, and the disqualification of qualitative approaches. The review discusses the challenges posed by indigenous research paradigms and the need for culturally sensitive and human rights-focused research procedures. The appendix includes The New Brunswick Declaration, which puts forward recommendations for a new ethics covenant. The review concludes by emphasizing the importance of bringing diverse ethical research reflections together to pave the way for a new and improved paradigm for social research ethics. [Extracted from the article]

Recently, a novel semi-quantum ring signature protocol (Quantum Inf. Process., 22(9), 337(2023)) was proposed. Although it has the properties of semi-quantum protocol, its verification process will fail when more than two users take part in the signature protocol. We show an example, in which four participants including the trusted third-party Trent are used, to prove the signature cannot be verified. Then, an improved semi-quantum ring signature protocol is proposed. In the new ring signature protocol, Trent generates the shared keys with each ring user. According to the shared keys, Trent encodes the GHZ state such that the identity of the true ring signatory can be traced by Trent. What is more, in our protocol, by measuring the received particles, all the ring users can create the same session key to generate a ring signature, which can guarantee the anonymity of the voter in the protocol. The improved ring signature protocol overcomes the drawback of the old one and can be secure against various eavesdropping attacks and forgery attack. Compared with the similar quantum ring signature protocols, ours has better practicability and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of cyberbullying is still something that continues to be discussed considering that the cases that occur are increasing every year. Currently, cyberbullying cases that occur among adolescents are of particular concern to many communities. It is feared that this can damage the developmental process in adolescents, especially with regard to their self-formation process. In Indonesia, research on cyberbullying has begun to develop, especially in big cities. Therefore, it is important to research the phenomenon of cyberbullying in other regions, one of which is Padang City. It is hoped that there will be a richness of information about the phenomenon of cyberbullying in Indonesia. The results showed that almost ¾ of the respondents knew the phenomenon of cyberbullying and about 22 percent of respondents had committed cyberbullying and less than 20 percent had been victims of cyberbullying. A more comprehensive study as well as interventions from the government and families are suggestions for this study. More research results will be explained in the discussion section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), introduced into the healthcare sector to improve patient care and enhance the efficiency of medical services, also brings the risk of the leakage of patients' privacy. Therefore, maintaining the communication security of patients' data has never been more important. However, WBAN faces issues such as open medium channels, resource constraints, and lack of infrastructure, which makes the task of designing a secure and economical communication scheme suitable for WBAN particularly challenging. Signcryption has garnered attention as a solution suitable for resource-constrained devices, offering a combination of authentication and confidentiality with low computational demands. Although the advantages offered by existing certificateless signcryption schemes are notable, most of them only have proven security within the random oracle model (ROM), lack public ciphertext authenticity, and have high computational overheads. To overcome these issues, we propose a certificateless anonymous signcryption (CL-ASC) scheme suitable for WBAN, featuring anonymity of the signcrypter, public verifiability, and public ciphertext authenticity. We prove its security in the standard model, including indistinguishability, unforgeability, anonymity of the signcrypter, and identity identifiability, and demonstrate its superiority over relevant schemes in terms of security, computational overheads, and storage costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing digitisation in our society also affects policing, which tends to make use of increasingly refined algorithmic tools based on abstract technologies. But the abstraction of technology, we argue, does not necessarily entail an increase in abstraction of police work. This paper contrasts the 'abstract police' debate with an analysis of police practices that use digital technologies to achieve greater precision. While the notion of abstract police assumes that computerisation distances police officers from their community, our empirical investigation of a geo-analysis unit in a German Land Office of Criminal Investigation shows that the adoption of abstract procedures does not by itself imply a detachment from local reference and community contact. What we call contextual reference can be productively combined with the impersonality and anonymity of algorithmic procedures, leading also to more effective and focused forms of collaboration with local entities. On the basis of our empirical results, we suggest a more nuanced understanding of the digitalisation of police work. Rather than leading to a progressive estrangement from the community of reference, the use of digital techniques can enable experimentation with innovative forms of 'precision policing', particularly in the field of crime prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tor browser is widely used for anonymity, providing layered encryption for enhanced privacy. Besides its positive uses, it is also popular among cybercriminals for illegal activities such as trafficking, smuggling, betting, and illicit trade. There is a need for Tor Browser forensics to identify its use in unlawful activities and explore its consequences. This research analyzes artifacts generated by Tor on Windows-based systems. The methodology integrates forensic techniques into incident responses per NIST SP (800-86), exploring areas such as registry, storage, network, and memory using tools like bulk-extractor, autopsy, and regshot. We propose an automated PowerShell script that detects Tor usage and retrieves artifacts with minimal user interaction. Finally, this research performs timeline analysis and artifact correlation for a contextual understanding of event sequences in memory and network domains, ultimately contributing to improved incident response and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust, the belief that others will fulfill their expected obligations, is of vital importance to social movements. While most research focuses on how trust facilitates protests, this article examines how high-risk activism participants deploy various relational tactics to reduce uncertainties and risks. With an in-depth case study of Hong Kong's protest movement in 2019–2020, this article finds anonymity, preexisting ties, and bonding are the three common responses. Across various interpersonal settings, participants strategize personal trust or minimize their risk exposure, finding ways to collaborate with strangers or acquaintances. Trust is more than a preexisting resource; it can also be created during movement mobilization. Trust enables protest participation, and it also aids in logistics provisioning, as well as sheltering and aftercare of activists. Finally, government repression has worked in part because it aims to undermine the trust networks built up during the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recommendation models are deployed in a variety of commercial applications to provide personalized services for users. However, most of them rely on the users' original rating records that are often collected by a centralized server for model training, which may cause privacy issues. Recently, some centralized federated recommendation models are proposed for the protection of users' privacy, which however requires a server for coordination in the whole process of model training. As a response, we propose a novel privacy-aware decentralized federated recommendation (DFedRec) model, which is lossless compared with the traditional model in recommendation performance and is thus more accurate than other models in this line. Specifically, we design a privacy-aware structured client-level graph for the sharing of the model parameters in the process of model training, which is a one-stone-two-bird strategy, i.e., it protects users' privacy via some randomly sampled fake entries and reduces the communication cost by sharing the model parameters only with the related neighboring users. With the help of the privacy-aware structured client-level graph, we propose two novel collaborative training mechanisms in the setting without a server, including a batch algorithm DFedRec(b) and a stochastic one DFedRec(s), where the former requires the anonymity mechanism while the latter does not. They are both equivalent to probabilistic matrix factorization trained in a centralized server and are thus lossless. We then provide formal analysis of privacy guarantee of our methods and conduct extensive empirical studies on three public datasets with explicit feedback, which show the effectiveness of our DFedRec, i.e., it is privacy aware, communication efficient, and lossless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]