Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Machine learning

Data Mining - Concepts and Techniques.

An overview of the self-organizing map algorithm, on which the papers in this issue are based, is presented in this article.

The Self-Organizing Map

Handwriting has continued to persist as a means of communication and recording information in day-to-day life even with the introduction of new technologies. Given its ubiquity in human transactions, machine recognition of handwriting has practical significance, as in reading handwritten notes in a PDA, in postal addresses on envelopes, in amounts in bank checks, in handwritten fields in forms, etc. This overview describes the nature of handwritten language, how it is transduced into electronic data, and the basic concepts behind written language recognition algorithms. Both the online case (which pertains to the availability of trajectory data during writing) and the off-line case (which pertains to scanned images) are considered. Algorithms for preprocessing, character and word recognition, and performance with practical systems are indicated. Other fields of application, like signature verification, writer authentification, handwriting learning tools are also considered.

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Online and off-line handwriting recognition: a comprehensive survey

Classical Sets and Fuzzy Sets.- Classical and Fuzzy Relations.- Membership Functions.- Defuzzification.- Fuzzy Rule-Based System.- Fuzzy Decision Making.- Applications of Fuzzy Logic.- Fuzzy Logic Projects with Matlab.

Introduction to Fuzzy Logic using MATLAB

Internet of Things security and forensics: Challenges and opportunities

Using codebooks of fragmented connected-component contours in forensic and historic writer identification

Malware analysis and detection techniques have been evolving during the last decade as a reflection to development of different malware techniques to evade network-based and host-based security protections. The fast growth in variety and number of malware species made it very difficult for forensics investigators to provide an on time response. Therefore, Machine Learning (ML) aided malware analysis became a necessity to automate different aspects of static and dynamic malware investigation. We believe that machine learning aided static analysis can be used as a methodological approach in technical Cyber Threats Intelligence (CTI) rather than resource-consuming dynamic malware analysis that has been thoroughly studied before. In this paper, we address this research gap by conducting an in-depth survey of different machine learning methods for classification of static characteristics of 32-bit malicious Portable Executable (PE32) Windows files and develop taxonomy for better understanding of these techniques. Afterwards, we offer a tutorial on how different machine learning techniques can be utilized in extraction and analysis of a variety of static characteristic of PE binaries and evaluate accuracy and practical generalization of these techniques. Finally, the results of experimental study of all the method using common data was given to demonstrate the accuracy and complexity. This paper may serve as a stepping stone for future researchers in cross-disciplinary field of machine learning aided malware forensics.

Machine Learning Aided Static Malware Analysis: A Survey and Tutorial

The quality of the feature selection algorithm is one of the most important factors that affects the effectiveness of an intrusion detection system (IDS). Achieving reduction of the number of relevant traffic features without negative effect on classification accuracy is a goal that greatly improves the overall effectiveness of the IDS. Obtaining a good feature set automatically without involving expert knowledge is a complex task. In this paper, we propose an automatic feature selection procedure based on the filter method used in machine learning. In particular, we focus on Correlation Feature Selection (CFS). By transforming the CFS optimization problem into a polynomial mixed 0−1 fractional programming problem and by introducing additional variables in the problem transformed in such a way, we obtain a new mixed 0 − 1 linear programming problem with a number of constraints and variables that is linear in the number of full set features. The mixed 0−1 linear programming problem can then be solved by means of branch-and-bound algorithm. Our feature selection algorithm was compared experimentally with the best-first-CFS and the genetic-algorithm-CFS methods regarding the feature selection capabilities. The classification accuracy obtained after the feature selection by means of the C4.5 and the BayesNet machines over the KDD CUP'99 IDS benchmarking data set was also tested. Experiments show that our proposed method outperforms the best first and genetic algorithm search strategies by removing much more redundant features and still keeping the classification accuracies or even getting better performances.

Improving Effectiveness of Intrusion Detection by Correlation Feature Selection

Computer-based forensic handwriting analysis requires sophisticated methods for the pre-processing of digitized paper documents, in order to provide high-quality digitized handwriting, which represents the original handwritten product as accurately as possible. Due to the requirement of processing a huge amount of different document types, neither a standardized queue of processing stages, fixed parameter sets nor fixed image operations are qualified for such pre-processing methods. Thus, we present an open layered framework that covers adaptation abilities at the parameter, operator, and algorithm levels. Moreover, an embedded module, which uses genetic programming, might generate specific filters for background removal on-the-fly. The framework is understood as an assistance system for forensic handwriting experts and has been in use by the Bundeskriminalamt, the federal police bureau in Germany, for two years. In the following, the layered framework will be presented, fundamental document-independent filters for textured, homogeneous background removal and for foreground removal will be described, as well as aspects of the implementation. Results of the framework-application will also be given.

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Katrin Franke

Papers

Internet of Things security and forensics: Challenges and opportunities

Using codebooks of fragmented connected-component contours in forensic and historic writer identification

Machine Learning Aided Static Malware Analysis: A Survey and Tutorial

Improving Effectiveness of Intrusion Detection by Correlation Feature Selection

A computer-based system to support forensic studies on handwritten documents