Fall 2012 Update

Update Fall:

So far this semester, a group of students from my school and I attended Purdue's Grad School Expo in October!
Beyond this, it has just been researching Grad Schools, GRE studying, and going through the application process.

I have a preliminary list of Grad Schools I am considering but I don't have a narrowed down list yet.

I am planning presenting next semester at a Women in Physics conference in Orlando.

Update: Current

Update 1

June 20, 2012

Rebecca D. Navarre

Degree in Progress at Wesleyan College

Major: Applied Mathematical Sciences

Minor: Physics

Extracurricular Activities: Volleyball, Student Government, Math Club/ KME

Jobs: Nurse Assistant, Computer Resident Advisor

Currently Attending Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia

Permanent Address: Adams, TN

Email: rdnavarre@wesleyancollege.edu

Brief Update: Week 4

posted Jul 17, 2012 9:12 AM by Rebecca Navarre

Brief Update: July 17 In the past few days, Mahdi has been lecturing and informing us on the Hierarchical  Node ID Distribution process and chunk factors. Also, he informed us that Persea  has a way of not only testing the system against  Insertion attacks and back pointer attacks but also of using a silent or  active attacker.    Thus far we have been simulating with an active attacker but now we will test with a silent attacker as well(my simulations).    An active attacker will return an incorrect result where as a silent attacker will just  ignore the query or drop the request.    With a silent attacker, no incorrect result is returned so the look up request still has  a chance of a correct result being returned as well as the DHTs of the source remaining  uncorrupted. Thus we can see that usually the active attacker is a more malicious  threat, but also that it is harder to accomplish and requires more control/bandwidth.    Our prediction of the silent attacker simulations is that the probability of a successful  result will not be influenced by the number of silent attackers. This prediction has thus  far been correct with only one data point/simulation left to finish.

Week 2/3

posted Jul 6, 2012 5:45 PM by Rebecca Navarre   [ updated Jul 6, 2012 5:47 PM ]

July 6, 2012 After we received the Persea code, Mahdi explained more attacks  such as sybil, insertion and reflection attacks. Persea starts with bootstrap nodes and a basic level of security based on a trusted network of friends that expands only to  other nodes that must be trusted by one node in the network. This requirement to be invited differentiates Persea from a regular Kademlia network where no mechanism checks for trusted/honest nodes. Another level of success in Persea that enables effecient lookups is Persea's Replication process. Within a network, a key/value pair is saved in more than one location equally spaced within the network so if a lookup encounters an attacker node it still leaves a chance of success from the other nodes in the network that also hold that key/value information. Last week, we ran lookups of 10000 and measured the success of the lookups without initializing the Persea system or more complex attackers. This week on Monday, Michael and I were assigned parameters that would not only enable the Persea system but also initialize sybil attacks, and in my  simulations Node insertion and Reflection attacks. Based on our data, we can compare how successful our lookups are with Persea on the defense as well as how well it holds up against more complex attacks.

Week 1

June 26, 2011

So the basic of week one in our lab was working with our 'mentors' Madhi and Charles. In the beginning we were tasked with learning Python, then told later to learn Java, and currently we haven't been told just how much we would be using either. 

On Monday, Madhi showed us his code that we would be working with.

Our assignment is to change the ca parameter that determines how many attack edges exist.( An attack edge exists when there is a connection between an honest node and an attack node. 

As of tonight I have run 6 out of the 7 assigned ca values. 

Arrival & Orientation

posted Jun 19, 2012 5:16 PM by Rebecca Navarre

June 17 - 19, 2012 June 19, 2012 I arrived yesterday and moved into Kalpana Chawla Hall on the University of Texas at Arlington campus. Coming from Wesleyan the first impression of the University was based on its size. 400 vs. 32000. After a few hours, my roommate and I got settled into  our room and prepared for our first day participating in the NSF funded REU  in Hazard Mitigation under the Civil Engineering Deparment.  Orientation: Monday and Tuesday included a whirlwind of introductions to the other professors and the other 10 people in our REU group.  Day 1 was basic REU information and a quick presentation on each project. Day 2 was all about ethic personal, professional, research and student.  Overall experience: Excited - to be on this huge campus and being offered this extraordinary  opportunity Nervous - Let's just be honest being in a whole new place is crazy. Questions thus far: What does peer to peer look like in action? And what is it really? Why is the gym so far away?