An Aspect-Oriented Framework for Systematic Security Hardening of Software Azzam Mourad, Ph.D. Concordia University, 2008 In this thesis, we address the problems related to the security hardening of open source software. Accordingly, we first propose an aspect-oriented and pattern-based approach for systematic security hardening. It is based on the full separation between the roles and duties o...

Security plays a predominant role in software engineering. Enforcing security policies should be considered during the early stages of the software development lifecycle to prevent security breaches in the final products. Because of the pervasive nature of security, integrating security solutions at the software design level may result in the scattering and tangling of security concerns through...

While the expenses for computational power decrease, iterative reconstruction methods for x-ray computed tomography (CT) that allow the use of improved model assumptions, become more attractive. In applications for non-destructive testing one of the most common degradations of image quality with standard x-ray CT reconstruction methods is beam hardening. Techniques for beam hardening correction...

Security plays a predominant role in software engineering. Enforcing security policies should be considered during the early stages of the software development lifecycle to prevent security breaches in the final products. Because of the pervasive nature of security, integrating security solutions at the software design level may result in the scattering and tangling of security concerns through...

Tobacco control efforts increased smoking abstinence up until 1990; however, in the mid-1990s, smoking prevalence rates and the U.S. per capita consumption leveled off and remained constant (CDC 1999b; Taylor 2001; see Chapter 8). Per capita consumption again declined in 1999 following the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) and a subsequent increase in the cost of cigarettes. However, it is uncl...

In this paper, we propose an iterative beam hardening correction method that is applicable for the case with multiple materials. By assuming that the materials composing scanned object are known and that they are distinguishable by their linear attenuation coefficients at some given energy, the beam hardening correction problem is converted into a nonlinear system problem, which is then solved ...

In this paper, we propose an aspect-oriented language, called SHL (Security Hardening Language), for specifying systematically the security hardening solutions. This language constitutes our new achievement towards developing our security hardening framework. SHL allows the description and specification of security hardening plans and patterns that are used to harden systematically security int...

The study of dislocations interacting with interfaces is of great interest to understand the strengthening and hardening mechanisms in materials. Most of the existing results in this field dealt with perfect interfaces where the displacements are continuous across interfaces. In reality, however, due to damage of interfaces or other reasons, the displacements across interfaces could have a jump...