Secure platooning control plays an important role in enhancing the cooperative driving safety of automated vehicles subject to various security vulnerabilities.This paper focuses on the distributed secure control issu...Secure platooning control plays an important role in enhancing the cooperative driving safety of automated vehicles subject to various security vulnerabilities.This paper focuses on the distributed secure control issue of automated vehicles affected by replay attacks.A proportional-integral-observer(PIO)with predetermined forgetting parameters is first constructed to acquire the dynamical information of vehicles.Then,a time-varying parameter and two positive scalars are employed to describe the temporal behavior of replay attacks.In light of such a scheme and the common properties of Laplace matrices,the closed-loop system with PIO-based controllers is transformed into a switched and time-delayed one.Furthermore,some sufficient conditions are derived to achieve the desired platooning performance by the view of the Lyapunov stability theory.The controller gains are analytically determined by resorting to the solution of certain matrix inequalities only dependent on maximum and minimum eigenvalues of communication topologies.Finally,a simulation example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.展开更多
This study investigates resilient platoon control for constrained intelligent and connected vehicles(ICVs)against F-local Byzantine attacks.We introduce a resilient distributed model-predictive platooning control fram...This study investigates resilient platoon control for constrained intelligent and connected vehicles(ICVs)against F-local Byzantine attacks.We introduce a resilient distributed model-predictive platooning control framework for such ICVs.This framework seamlessly integrates the predesigned optimal control with distributed model predictive control(DMPC)optimization and introduces a unique distributed attack detector to ensure the reliability of the transmitted information among vehicles.Notably,our strategy uses previously broadcasted information and a specialized convex set,termed the“resilience set”,to identify unreliable data.This approach significantly eases graph robustness prerequisites,requiring only an(F+1)-robust graph,in contrast to the established mean sequence reduced algorithms,which require a minimum(2F+1)-robust graph.Additionally,we introduce a verification algorithm to restore trust in vehicles under minor attacks,further reducing communication network robustness.Our analysis demonstrates the recursive feasibility of the DMPC optimization.Furthermore,the proposed method achieves exceptional control performance by minimizing the discrepancies between the DMPC control inputs and predesigned platoon control inputs,while ensuring constraint compliance and cybersecurity.Simulation results verify the effectiveness of our theoretical findings.展开更多
Phishing,an Internet fraudwhere individuals are deceived into revealing critical personal and account information,poses a significant risk to both consumers and web-based institutions.Data indicates a persistent rise ...Phishing,an Internet fraudwhere individuals are deceived into revealing critical personal and account information,poses a significant risk to both consumers and web-based institutions.Data indicates a persistent rise in phishing attacks.Moreover,these fraudulent schemes are progressively becoming more intricate,thereby rendering them more challenging to identify.Hence,it is imperative to utilize sophisticated algorithms to address this issue.Machine learning is a highly effective approach for identifying and uncovering these harmful behaviors.Machine learning(ML)approaches can identify common characteristics in most phishing assaults.In this paper,we propose an ensemble approach and compare it with six machine learning techniques to determine the type of website and whether it is normal or not based on two phishing datasets.After that,we used the normalization technique on the dataset to transform the range of all the features into the same range.The findings of this paper for all algorithms are as follows in the first dataset based on accuracy,precision,recall,and F1-score,respectively:Decision Tree(DT)(0.964,0.961,0.976,0.968),Random Forest(RF)(0.970,0.964,0.984,0.974),Gradient Boosting(GB)(0.960,0.959,0.971,0.965),XGBoost(XGB)(0.973,0.976,0.976,0.976),AdaBoost(0.934,0.934,0.950,0.942),Multi Layer Perceptron(MLP)(0.970,0.971,0.976,0.974)and Voting(0.978,0.975,0.987,0.981).So,the Voting classifier gave the best results.While in the second dataset,all the algorithms gave the same results in four evaluation metrics,which indicates that each of them can effectively accomplish the prediction process.Also,this approach outperformed the previous work in detecting phishing websites with high accuracy,a lower false negative rate,a shorter prediction time,and a lower false positive rate.展开更多
Bayesian networks are a powerful class of graphical decision models used to represent causal relationships among variables.However,the reliability and integrity of learned Bayesian network models are highly dependent ...Bayesian networks are a powerful class of graphical decision models used to represent causal relationships among variables.However,the reliability and integrity of learned Bayesian network models are highly dependent on the quality of incoming data streams.One of the primary challenges with Bayesian networks is their vulnerability to adversarial data poisoning attacks,wherein malicious data is injected into the training dataset to negatively influence the Bayesian network models and impair their performance.In this research paper,we propose an efficient framework for detecting data poisoning attacks against Bayesian network structure learning algorithms.Our framework utilizes latent variables to quantify the amount of belief between every two nodes in each causal model over time.We use our innovative methodology to tackle an important issue with data poisoning assaults in the context of Bayesian networks.With regard to four different forms of data poisoning attacks,we specifically aim to strengthen the security and dependability of Bayesian network structure learning techniques,such as the PC algorithm.By doing this,we explore the complexity of this area and offer workablemethods for identifying and reducing these sneaky dangers.Additionally,our research investigates one particular use case,the“Visit to Asia Network.”The practical consequences of using uncertainty as a way to spot cases of data poisoning are explored in this inquiry,which is of utmost relevance.Our results demonstrate the promising efficacy of latent variables in detecting and mitigating the threat of data poisoning attacks.Additionally,our proposed latent-based framework proves to be sensitive in detecting malicious data poisoning attacks in the context of stream data.展开更多
Quantum key distribution(QKD),rooted in quantum mechanics,offers information-theoretic security.However,practi-cal systems open security threats due to imperfections,notably bright-light blinding attacks targeting sin...Quantum key distribution(QKD),rooted in quantum mechanics,offers information-theoretic security.However,practi-cal systems open security threats due to imperfections,notably bright-light blinding attacks targeting single-photon detectors.Here,we propose a concise,robust defense strategy for protecting single-photon detectors in QKD systems against blinding attacks.Our strategy uses a dual approach:detecting the bias current of the avalanche photodiode(APD)to defend against con-tinuous-wave blinding attacks,and monitoring the avalanche amplitude to protect against pulsed blinding attacks.By integrat-ing these two branches,the proposed solution effectively identifies and mitigates a wide range of bright light injection attempts,significantly enhancing the resilience of QKD systems against various bright-light blinding attacks.This method forti-fies the safeguards of quantum communications and offers a crucial contribution to the field of quantum information security.展开更多
Owing to the integration of energy digitization and artificial intelligence technology,smart energy grids can realize the stable,efficient and clean operation of power systems.However,the emergence of cyber-physical a...Owing to the integration of energy digitization and artificial intelligence technology,smart energy grids can realize the stable,efficient and clean operation of power systems.However,the emergence of cyber-physical attacks,such as dynamic load-altering attacks(DLAAs)has introduced great challenges to the security of smart energy grids.Thus,this study developed a novel cyber-physical collaborative security framework for DLAAs in smart energy grids.The proposed framework integrates attack prediction in the cyber layer with the detection and localization of attacks in the physical layer.First,a data-driven method was proposed to predict the DLAA sequence in the cyber layer.By designing a double radial basis function network,the influence of disturbances on attack prediction can be eliminated.Based on the prediction results,an unknown input observer-based detection and localization method was further developed for the physical layer.In addition,an adaptive threshold was designed to replace the traditional precomputed threshold and improve the detection performance of the DLAAs.Consequently,through the collaborative work of the cyber-physics layer,injected DLAAs were effectively detected and located.Compared with existing methodologies,the simulation results on IEEE 14-bus and 118-bus power systems verified the superiority of the proposed cyber-physical collaborative detection and localization against DLAAs.展开更多
In an effort to investigate and quantify the patterns of local scour,researchers embarked on an in-depth study using a systematic experimental approach.The research focused on the effects of local scour around a set o...In an effort to investigate and quantify the patterns of local scour,researchers embarked on an in-depth study using a systematic experimental approach.The research focused on the effects of local scour around a set of four piles,each subjected to different hydromechanical conditions.In particular,this study aimed to determine how different attack angles—the angles at which the water flow impinges on the piles,and gap ratios—the ratios of the spacing between the piles to their diameters,influence the extent and nature of scour.A comprehensive series of 35 carefully designed experiments were orchestrated,each designed to dissect the nuances in how the gap ratio and attack angle might contribute to changes in the local scour observed at the base of pile groups.During these experimental trials,a wealth of local scour data were collected to support the analysis.These data included precise topographic profiles of the sediment bed around the pile groups,as well as detailed scour time histories showing the evolution of scour at strategic feature points throughout the test procedure.The analysis of the experimental data provided interesting insights.The study revealed that the interplay between the gap ratio and the attack angle had a pronounced influence on the scouring dynamics of the pile groups.One of the key observations was that the initial phases of scour,particularly within the first hour of water flow exposure,were characterized by a sharp increase in the scour depth occurring immediately in front of the piles.After this initial rapid development,the scour depth transitioned to a more gradual change rate.In contrast,the scour topography around the piles continuously evolved.This suggests that sediment displacement and the associated sculpting of the seabed around pile foundations are sustained and progressive processes,altering the underwater landscape over time.The results of this empirical investigation have significant implications for the design and construction of offshore multi-pile foundations,providing a critical reference for engineers and designers to estimate the expected scour depth around such structures,which is an integral part of decisions regarding foundation design,selection of structural materials,and implementation of scour protection measures.展开更多
Continuous-variable quantum key distribution with a local local oscillator(LLO CVQKD)has been extensively researched due to its simplicity and security.For practical security of an LLO CVQKD system,there are two main ...Continuous-variable quantum key distribution with a local local oscillator(LLO CVQKD)has been extensively researched due to its simplicity and security.For practical security of an LLO CVQKD system,there are two main attack modes referred to as reference pulse attack and polarization attack presently.However,there is currently no general defense strategy against such attacks,and the security of the system needs further investigation.Here,we employ a deep learning framework called generative adversarial networks(GANs)to detect both attacks.We first analyze the data in different cases,derive a feature vector as input to a GAN model,and then show the training and testing process of the GAN model for attack classification.The proposed model has two parts,a discriminator and a generator,both of which employ a convolutional neural network(CNN)to improve accuracy.Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can detect and classify attacks without reducing the secret key rate and the maximum transmission distance.It only establishes a detection model by monitoring features of the pulse without adding additional devices.展开更多
Object detection finds wide application in various sectors,including autonomous driving,industry,and healthcare.Recent studies have highlighted the vulnerability of object detection models built using deep neural netw...Object detection finds wide application in various sectors,including autonomous driving,industry,and healthcare.Recent studies have highlighted the vulnerability of object detection models built using deep neural networks when confronted with carefully crafted adversarial examples.This not only reveals their shortcomings in defending against malicious attacks but also raises widespread concerns about the security of existing systems.Most existing adversarial attack strategies focus primarily on image classification problems,failing to fully exploit the unique characteristics of object detectionmodels,thus resulting in widespread deficiencies in their transferability.Furthermore,previous research has predominantly concentrated on the transferability issues of non-targeted attacks,whereas enhancing the transferability of targeted adversarial examples presents even greater challenges.Traditional attack techniques typically employ cross-entropy as a loss measure,iteratively adjusting adversarial examples to match target categories.However,their inherent limitations restrict their broad applicability and transferability across different models.To address the aforementioned challenges,this study proposes a novel targeted adversarial attack method aimed at enhancing the transferability of adversarial samples across object detection models.Within the framework of iterative attacks,we devise a new objective function designed to mitigate consistency issues arising from cumulative noise and to enhance the separation between target and non-target categories(logit margin).Secondly,a data augmentation framework incorporating random erasing and color transformations is introduced into targeted adversarial attacks.This enhances the diversity of gradients,preventing overfitting to white-box models.Lastly,perturbations are applied only within the specified object’s bounding box to reduce the perturbation range,enhancing attack stealthiness.Experiments were conducted on the Microsoft Common Objects in Context(MS COCO)dataset using You Only Look Once version 3(YOLOv3),You Only Look Once version 8(YOLOv8),Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks(Faster R-CNN),and RetinaNet.The results demonstrate a significant advantage of the proposed method in black-box settings.Among these,the success rate of RetinaNet transfer attacks reached a maximum of 82.59%.展开更多
In the era of the Internet of Things(IoT),the proliferation of connected devices has raised security concerns,increasing the risk of intrusions into diverse systems.Despite the convenience and efficiency offered by Io...In the era of the Internet of Things(IoT),the proliferation of connected devices has raised security concerns,increasing the risk of intrusions into diverse systems.Despite the convenience and efficiency offered by IoT technology,the growing number of IoT devices escalates the likelihood of attacks,emphasizing the need for robust security tools to automatically detect and explain threats.This paper introduces a deep learning methodology for detecting and classifying distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks,addressing a significant security concern within IoT environments.An effective procedure of deep transfer learning is applied to utilize deep learning backbones,which is then evaluated on two benchmarking datasets of DDoS attacks in terms of accuracy and time complexity.By leveraging several deep architectures,the study conducts thorough binary and multiclass experiments,each varying in the complexity of classifying attack types and demonstrating real-world scenarios.Additionally,this study employs an explainable artificial intelligence(XAI)AI technique to elucidate the contribution of extracted features in the process of attack detection.The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method,achieving a recall of 99.39%by the XAI bidirectional long short-term memory(XAI-BiLSTM)model.展开更多
In recent years,deep learning has been the mainstream technology for fingerprint liveness detection(FLD)tasks because of its remarkable performance.However,recent studies have shown that these deep fake fingerprint de...In recent years,deep learning has been the mainstream technology for fingerprint liveness detection(FLD)tasks because of its remarkable performance.However,recent studies have shown that these deep fake fingerprint detection(DFFD)models are not resistant to attacks by adversarial examples,which are generated by the introduction of subtle perturbations in the fingerprint image,allowing the model to make fake judgments.Most of the existing adversarial example generation methods are based on gradient optimization,which is easy to fall into local optimal,resulting in poor transferability of adversarial attacks.In addition,the perturbation added to the blank area of the fingerprint image is easily perceived by the human eye,leading to poor visual quality.In response to the above challenges,this paper proposes a novel adversarial attack method based on local adaptive gradient variance for DFFD.The ridge texture area within the fingerprint image has been identified and designated as the region for perturbation generation.Subsequently,the images are fed into the targeted white-box model,and the gradient direction is optimized to compute gradient variance.Additionally,an adaptive parameter search method is proposed using stochastic gradient ascent to explore the parameter values during adversarial example generation,aiming to maximize adversarial attack performance.Experimental results on two publicly available fingerprint datasets show that ourmethod achieves higher attack transferability and robustness than existing methods,and the perturbation is harder to perceive.展开更多
Serverless computing is a promising paradigm in cloud computing that greatly simplifies cloud programming.With serverless computing,developers only provide function code to serverless platform,and these functions are ...Serverless computing is a promising paradigm in cloud computing that greatly simplifies cloud programming.With serverless computing,developers only provide function code to serverless platform,and these functions are invoked by its driven events.Nonetheless,security threats in serverless computing such as vulnerability-based security threats have become the pain point hindering its wide adoption.The ideas in proactive defense such as redundancy,diversity and dynamic provide promising approaches to protect against cyberattacks.However,these security technologies are mostly applied to serverless platform based on“stacked”mode,as they are designed independent with serverless computing.The lack of security consideration in the initial design makes it especially challenging to achieve the all life cycle protection for serverless application with limited cost.In this paper,we present ATSSC,a proactive defense enabled attack tolerant serverless platform.ATSSC integrates the characteristic of redundancy,diversity and dynamic into serverless seamless to achieve high-level security and efficiency.Specifically,ATSSC constructs multiple diverse function replicas to process the driven events and performs cross-validation to verify the results.In order to create diverse function replicas,both software diversity and environment diversity are adopted.Furthermore,a dynamic function refresh strategy is proposed to keep the clean state of serverless functions.We implement ATSSC based on Kubernetes and Knative.Analysis and experimental results demonstrate that ATSSC can effectively protect serverless computing against cyberattacks with acceptable costs.展开更多
The RPL(IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks)protocol is essential for efficient communi-cation within the Internet of Things(IoT)ecosystem.Despite its significance,RPL’s susceptibility to attacks r...The RPL(IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks)protocol is essential for efficient communi-cation within the Internet of Things(IoT)ecosystem.Despite its significance,RPL’s susceptibility to attacks remains a concern.This paper presents a comprehensive simulation-based analysis of the RPL protocol’s vulnerability to the decreased rank attack in both static andmobilenetwork environments.We employ the Random Direction Mobility Model(RDM)for mobile scenarios within the Cooja simulator.Our systematic evaluation focuses on critical performance metrics,including Packet Delivery Ratio(PDR),Average End to End Delay(AE2ED),throughput,Expected Transmission Count(ETX),and Average Power Consumption(APC).Our findings illuminate the disruptive impact of this attack on the routing hierarchy,resulting in decreased PDR and throughput,increased AE2ED,ETX,and APC.These results underscore the urgent need for robust security measures to protect RPL-based IoT networks.Furthermore,our study emphasizes the exacerbated impact of the attack in mobile scenarios,highlighting the evolving security requirements of IoT networks.展开更多
Adversarial attacks have been posing significant security concerns to intelligent systems,such as speaker recognition systems(SRSs).Most attacks assume the neural networks in the systems are known beforehand,while bla...Adversarial attacks have been posing significant security concerns to intelligent systems,such as speaker recognition systems(SRSs).Most attacks assume the neural networks in the systems are known beforehand,while black-box attacks are proposed without such information to meet practical situations.Existing black-box attacks improve trans-ferability by integrating multiple models or training on multiple datasets,but these methods are costly.Motivated by the optimisation strategy with spatial information on the perturbed paths and samples,we propose a Dual Spatial Momentum Iterative Fast Gradient Sign Method(DS-MI-FGSM)to improve the transferability of black-box at-tacks against SRSs.Specifically,DS-MI-FGSM only needs a single data and one model as the input;by extending to the data and model neighbouring spaces,it generates adver-sarial examples against the integrating models.To reduce the risk of overfitting,DS-MI-FGSM also introduces gradient masking to improve transferability.The authors conduct extensive experiments regarding the speaker recognition task,and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of their method,which can achieve up to 92%attack success rate on the victim model in black-box scenarios with only one known model.展开更多
Kinetically constrained spin systems are toy models of supercooled liquids and amorphous solids. In this perspective,we revisit the prototypical Fredrickson–Andersen(FA) kinetically constrained model from the viewpoi...Kinetically constrained spin systems are toy models of supercooled liquids and amorphous solids. In this perspective,we revisit the prototypical Fredrickson–Andersen(FA) kinetically constrained model from the viewpoint of K-core combinatorial optimization. Each kinetic cluster of the FA system, containing all the mutually visitable microscopic occupation configurations, is exactly the solution space of a specific instance of the K-core attack problem. The whole set of different jammed occupation patterns of the FA system is the configuration space of an equilibrium K-core problem. Based on recent theoretical results achieved on the K-core attack and equilibrium K-core problems, we discuss the thermodynamic spin glass phase transitions and the maximum occupation density of the fully unfrozen FA kinetic cluster, and the minimum occupation density and extreme vulnerability of the partially frozen(jammed) kinetic clusters. The equivalence between K-core attack and the fully unfrozen FA kinetic cluster also implies a new way of sampling K-core attack solutions.展开更多
The rapid increase in vehicle traffic volume in modern societies has raised the need to develop innovative solutions to reduce traffic congestion and enhance traffic management efficiency.Revolutionary advanced techno...The rapid increase in vehicle traffic volume in modern societies has raised the need to develop innovative solutions to reduce traffic congestion and enhance traffic management efficiency.Revolutionary advanced technology,such as Intelligent Transportation Systems(ITS),enables improved traffic management,helps eliminate congestion,and supports a safer environment.ITS provides real-time information on vehicle traffic and transportation systems that can improve decision-making for road users.However,ITS suffers from routing issues at the network layer when utilising Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks(VANETs).This is because each vehicle plays the role of a router in this network,which leads to a complex vehicle communication network,causing issues such as repeated link breakages between vehicles resulting from the mobility of the network and rapid topological variation.This may lead to loss or delay in packet transmissions;this weakness can be exploited in routing attacks,such as black-hole and gray-hole attacks,that threaten the availability of ITS services.In this paper,a Blockchain-based smart contracts model is proposed to offer convenient and comprehensive security mechanisms,enhancing the trustworthiness between vehicles.Self-Classification Blockchain-Based Contracts(SCBC)and Voting-Classification Blockchain-Based Contracts(VCBC)are utilised in the proposed protocol.The results show that VCBC succeeds in attaining better results in PDR and TP performance even in the presence of Blackhole and Grayhole attacks.展开更多
In vehicle edge computing(VEC),asynchronous federated learning(AFL)is used,where the edge receives a local model and updates the global model,effectively reducing the global aggregation latency.Due to different amount...In vehicle edge computing(VEC),asynchronous federated learning(AFL)is used,where the edge receives a local model and updates the global model,effectively reducing the global aggregation latency.Due to different amounts of local data,computing capabilities and locations of the vehicles,renewing the global model with same weight is inappropriate.The above factors will affect the local calculation time and upload time of the local model,and the vehicle may also be affected by Byzantine attacks,leading to the deterioration of the vehicle data.However,based on deep reinforcement learning(DRL),we can consider these factors comprehensively to eliminate vehicles with poor performance as much as possible and exclude vehicles that have suffered Byzantine attacks before AFL.At the same time,when aggregating AFL,we can focus on those vehicles with better performance to improve the accuracy and safety of the system.In this paper,we proposed a vehicle selection scheme based on DRL in VEC.In this scheme,vehicle’s mobility,channel conditions with temporal variations,computational resources with temporal variations,different data amount,transmission channel status of vehicles as well as Byzantine attacks were taken into account.Simulation results show that the proposed scheme effectively improves the safety and accuracy of the global model.展开更多
Internet of Things(IoT)is vulnerable to data-tampering(DT)attacks.Due to resource limitations,many anomaly detection systems(ADSs)for IoT have high false positive rates when detecting DT attacks.This leads to the misr...Internet of Things(IoT)is vulnerable to data-tampering(DT)attacks.Due to resource limitations,many anomaly detection systems(ADSs)for IoT have high false positive rates when detecting DT attacks.This leads to the misreporting of normal data,which will impact the normal operation of IoT.To mitigate the impact caused by the high false positive rate of ADS,this paper proposes an ADS management scheme for clustered IoT.First,we model the data transmission and anomaly detection in clustered IoT.Then,the operation strategy of the clustered IoT is formulated as the running probabilities of all ADSs deployed on every IoT device.In the presence of a high false positive rate in ADSs,to deal with the trade-off between the security and availability of data,we develop a linear programming model referred to as a security trade-off(ST)model.Next,we develop an analysis framework for the ST model,and solve the ST model on an IoT simulation platform.Last,we reveal the effect of some factors on the maximum combined detection rate through theoretical analysis.Simulations show that the ADS management scheme can mitigate the data unavailability loss caused by the high false positive rates in ADS.展开更多
Introduction: On the 5<sup>th</sup> of June 2022, an incident of a mass attack following multiple gunshots and explosions occurred in a community in Ondo State Nigeria. This study aims to assess the mental...Introduction: On the 5<sup>th</sup> of June 2022, an incident of a mass attack following multiple gunshots and explosions occurred in a community in Ondo State Nigeria. This study aims to assess the mental health status of victims of the mass attack to guide further interventions among them. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among victims of a mass attack in Owo community, Ondo State. A total of 209 affected victims were interviewed on socio-demographic characteristics, symptoms of anxiety (AD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), threat experienced, and mental health support received. A 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and 9-item Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) scale were used to assess the mental health status of the victims. A point was assigned to respondents who reported the symptoms of GAD, with a maximum score of 7 attained. For GAD, scores were categorized as follows: 1 - 2 as mild, 2 - 3 as minimal, 4 - 5 as moderate and 6 - 7 as severe. The PTSD symptoms were rated using a 5-point Likert scale response, and assigned the following points;4 = extremely, 3 = quite a bit, 2 = moderate, 1 = a little bit and 0 = not at all. From a maximum score of 36, participants with scores 18 and above were categorized as those with provisional PTSD. The independent samples t-test and correlational analysis were used to determine the association between PTSD score and other independent variables, with an alpha level of significance set at 0.05. Results: Generally, 38 (18.2%) of the respondents had severe AD. About half (89;42.6%) were categorized as those with provisional PTSD. The mean level of both AD (3.40 ± 2.26) and PTSD (16.51 ± 7.63) score is higher among those who were married compared to those not married (anxiety disorder;2.52 ± 2.20, P = 0.005 and PTSD;13.20 ± 8.86, P = 0.004). Respondents who have been counseled by a healthcare worker had a higher mean level (15.89 ± 7.58) of provisional PTSD compared to those not counseled by a healthcare worker (13.56 ± 9.22, P = 0.046). The level of PTSD score increased with a higher age group (r = 0.21, P = 0.003). Conclusions: The results show that the mass attack had psychological consequences among a high proportion of the victims, particularly, those married and in the older age groups. This suggests the need for continuous supportive counseling targeting these affected groups, and considering other factors moderating the effectiveness of counseling among them in future interventions.展开更多
This case report investigates the manifestation of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) through recurrent Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIAs) in an 82-year-old patient. Despite initial diagnostic complexities, cerebral ang...This case report investigates the manifestation of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) through recurrent Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIAs) in an 82-year-old patient. Despite initial diagnostic complexities, cerebral angiography-MRI revealed features indicative of CAA. Symptomatic treatment resulted in improvement, but the patient later developed a fatal hematoma. The discussion navigates the intricate therapeutic landscape of repetitive TIAs in the elderly with cardiovascular risk factors, emphasizing the pivotal role of cerebral MRI and meticulous bleeding risk management. The conclusion stresses the importance of incorporating SWI sequences, specifically when suspecting a cardioembolic TIA, as a diagnostic measure to explore and exclude CAA in the differential diagnosis. This case report provides valuable insights into these challenges, highlighting the need to consider CAA in relevant cases.展开更多
基金supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61973219,U21A2019,61873058)the Hainan Province Science and Technology Special Fund (ZDYF2022SHFZ105)。
文摘Secure platooning control plays an important role in enhancing the cooperative driving safety of automated vehicles subject to various security vulnerabilities.This paper focuses on the distributed secure control issue of automated vehicles affected by replay attacks.A proportional-integral-observer(PIO)with predetermined forgetting parameters is first constructed to acquire the dynamical information of vehicles.Then,a time-varying parameter and two positive scalars are employed to describe the temporal behavior of replay attacks.In light of such a scheme and the common properties of Laplace matrices,the closed-loop system with PIO-based controllers is transformed into a switched and time-delayed one.Furthermore,some sufficient conditions are derived to achieve the desired platooning performance by the view of the Lyapunov stability theory.The controller gains are analytically determined by resorting to the solution of certain matrix inequalities only dependent on maximum and minimum eigenvalues of communication topologies.Finally,a simulation example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
基金the financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada(NSERC)。
文摘This study investigates resilient platoon control for constrained intelligent and connected vehicles(ICVs)against F-local Byzantine attacks.We introduce a resilient distributed model-predictive platooning control framework for such ICVs.This framework seamlessly integrates the predesigned optimal control with distributed model predictive control(DMPC)optimization and introduces a unique distributed attack detector to ensure the reliability of the transmitted information among vehicles.Notably,our strategy uses previously broadcasted information and a specialized convex set,termed the“resilience set”,to identify unreliable data.This approach significantly eases graph robustness prerequisites,requiring only an(F+1)-robust graph,in contrast to the established mean sequence reduced algorithms,which require a minimum(2F+1)-robust graph.Additionally,we introduce a verification algorithm to restore trust in vehicles under minor attacks,further reducing communication network robustness.Our analysis demonstrates the recursive feasibility of the DMPC optimization.Furthermore,the proposed method achieves exceptional control performance by minimizing the discrepancies between the DMPC control inputs and predesigned platoon control inputs,while ensuring constraint compliance and cybersecurity.Simulation results verify the effectiveness of our theoretical findings.
基金funding from Deanship of Scientific Research in King Faisal University with Grant Number KFU 241085.
文摘Phishing,an Internet fraudwhere individuals are deceived into revealing critical personal and account information,poses a significant risk to both consumers and web-based institutions.Data indicates a persistent rise in phishing attacks.Moreover,these fraudulent schemes are progressively becoming more intricate,thereby rendering them more challenging to identify.Hence,it is imperative to utilize sophisticated algorithms to address this issue.Machine learning is a highly effective approach for identifying and uncovering these harmful behaviors.Machine learning(ML)approaches can identify common characteristics in most phishing assaults.In this paper,we propose an ensemble approach and compare it with six machine learning techniques to determine the type of website and whether it is normal or not based on two phishing datasets.After that,we used the normalization technique on the dataset to transform the range of all the features into the same range.The findings of this paper for all algorithms are as follows in the first dataset based on accuracy,precision,recall,and F1-score,respectively:Decision Tree(DT)(0.964,0.961,0.976,0.968),Random Forest(RF)(0.970,0.964,0.984,0.974),Gradient Boosting(GB)(0.960,0.959,0.971,0.965),XGBoost(XGB)(0.973,0.976,0.976,0.976),AdaBoost(0.934,0.934,0.950,0.942),Multi Layer Perceptron(MLP)(0.970,0.971,0.976,0.974)and Voting(0.978,0.975,0.987,0.981).So,the Voting classifier gave the best results.While in the second dataset,all the algorithms gave the same results in four evaluation metrics,which indicates that each of them can effectively accomplish the prediction process.Also,this approach outperformed the previous work in detecting phishing websites with high accuracy,a lower false negative rate,a shorter prediction time,and a lower false positive rate.
文摘Bayesian networks are a powerful class of graphical decision models used to represent causal relationships among variables.However,the reliability and integrity of learned Bayesian network models are highly dependent on the quality of incoming data streams.One of the primary challenges with Bayesian networks is their vulnerability to adversarial data poisoning attacks,wherein malicious data is injected into the training dataset to negatively influence the Bayesian network models and impair their performance.In this research paper,we propose an efficient framework for detecting data poisoning attacks against Bayesian network structure learning algorithms.Our framework utilizes latent variables to quantify the amount of belief between every two nodes in each causal model over time.We use our innovative methodology to tackle an important issue with data poisoning assaults in the context of Bayesian networks.With regard to four different forms of data poisoning attacks,we specifically aim to strengthen the security and dependability of Bayesian network structure learning techniques,such as the PC algorithm.By doing this,we explore the complexity of this area and offer workablemethods for identifying and reducing these sneaky dangers.Additionally,our research investigates one particular use case,the“Visit to Asia Network.”The practical consequences of using uncertainty as a way to spot cases of data poisoning are explored in this inquiry,which is of utmost relevance.Our results demonstrate the promising efficacy of latent variables in detecting and mitigating the threat of data poisoning attacks.Additionally,our proposed latent-based framework proves to be sensitive in detecting malicious data poisoning attacks in the context of stream data.
基金This work was supported by the Major Scientific and Technological Special Project of Anhui Province(202103a13010004)the Major Scientific and Technological Special Project of Hefei City(2021DX007)+1 种基金the Key R&D Plan of Shandong Province(2020CXGC010105)the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(2021M700315).
文摘Quantum key distribution(QKD),rooted in quantum mechanics,offers information-theoretic security.However,practi-cal systems open security threats due to imperfections,notably bright-light blinding attacks targeting single-photon detectors.Here,we propose a concise,robust defense strategy for protecting single-photon detectors in QKD systems against blinding attacks.Our strategy uses a dual approach:detecting the bias current of the avalanche photodiode(APD)to defend against con-tinuous-wave blinding attacks,and monitoring the avalanche amplitude to protect against pulsed blinding attacks.By integrat-ing these two branches,the proposed solution effectively identifies and mitigates a wide range of bright light injection attempts,significantly enhancing the resilience of QKD systems against various bright-light blinding attacks.This method forti-fies the safeguards of quantum communications and offers a crucial contribution to the field of quantum information security.
基金supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China under 62203376the Science and Technology Plan of Hebei Education Department under QN2021139+1 种基金the Nature Science Foundation of Hebei Province under F2021203043the Open Research Fund of Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Smart Distribution Network,Nanjing Institute of Technology under No.XTCX202203.
文摘Owing to the integration of energy digitization and artificial intelligence technology,smart energy grids can realize the stable,efficient and clean operation of power systems.However,the emergence of cyber-physical attacks,such as dynamic load-altering attacks(DLAAs)has introduced great challenges to the security of smart energy grids.Thus,this study developed a novel cyber-physical collaborative security framework for DLAAs in smart energy grids.The proposed framework integrates attack prediction in the cyber layer with the detection and localization of attacks in the physical layer.First,a data-driven method was proposed to predict the DLAA sequence in the cyber layer.By designing a double radial basis function network,the influence of disturbances on attack prediction can be eliminated.Based on the prediction results,an unknown input observer-based detection and localization method was further developed for the physical layer.In addition,an adaptive threshold was designed to replace the traditional precomputed threshold and improve the detection performance of the DLAAs.Consequently,through the collaborative work of the cyber-physics layer,injected DLAAs were effectively detected and located.Compared with existing methodologies,the simulation results on IEEE 14-bus and 118-bus power systems verified the superiority of the proposed cyber-physical collaborative detection and localization against DLAAs.
基金financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.51890913)the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province of China(Grant No.2023YFQ0111)。
文摘In an effort to investigate and quantify the patterns of local scour,researchers embarked on an in-depth study using a systematic experimental approach.The research focused on the effects of local scour around a set of four piles,each subjected to different hydromechanical conditions.In particular,this study aimed to determine how different attack angles—the angles at which the water flow impinges on the piles,and gap ratios—the ratios of the spacing between the piles to their diameters,influence the extent and nature of scour.A comprehensive series of 35 carefully designed experiments were orchestrated,each designed to dissect the nuances in how the gap ratio and attack angle might contribute to changes in the local scour observed at the base of pile groups.During these experimental trials,a wealth of local scour data were collected to support the analysis.These data included precise topographic profiles of the sediment bed around the pile groups,as well as detailed scour time histories showing the evolution of scour at strategic feature points throughout the test procedure.The analysis of the experimental data provided interesting insights.The study revealed that the interplay between the gap ratio and the attack angle had a pronounced influence on the scouring dynamics of the pile groups.One of the key observations was that the initial phases of scour,particularly within the first hour of water flow exposure,were characterized by a sharp increase in the scour depth occurring immediately in front of the piles.After this initial rapid development,the scour depth transitioned to a more gradual change rate.In contrast,the scour topography around the piles continuously evolved.This suggests that sediment displacement and the associated sculpting of the seabed around pile foundations are sustained and progressive processes,altering the underwater landscape over time.The results of this empirical investigation have significant implications for the design and construction of offshore multi-pile foundations,providing a critical reference for engineers and designers to estimate the expected scour depth around such structures,which is an integral part of decisions regarding foundation design,selection of structural materials,and implementation of scour protection measures.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.62001383)。
文摘Continuous-variable quantum key distribution with a local local oscillator(LLO CVQKD)has been extensively researched due to its simplicity and security.For practical security of an LLO CVQKD system,there are two main attack modes referred to as reference pulse attack and polarization attack presently.However,there is currently no general defense strategy against such attacks,and the security of the system needs further investigation.Here,we employ a deep learning framework called generative adversarial networks(GANs)to detect both attacks.We first analyze the data in different cases,derive a feature vector as input to a GAN model,and then show the training and testing process of the GAN model for attack classification.The proposed model has two parts,a discriminator and a generator,both of which employ a convolutional neural network(CNN)to improve accuracy.Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can detect and classify attacks without reducing the secret key rate and the maximum transmission distance.It only establishes a detection model by monitoring features of the pulse without adding additional devices.
文摘Object detection finds wide application in various sectors,including autonomous driving,industry,and healthcare.Recent studies have highlighted the vulnerability of object detection models built using deep neural networks when confronted with carefully crafted adversarial examples.This not only reveals their shortcomings in defending against malicious attacks but also raises widespread concerns about the security of existing systems.Most existing adversarial attack strategies focus primarily on image classification problems,failing to fully exploit the unique characteristics of object detectionmodels,thus resulting in widespread deficiencies in their transferability.Furthermore,previous research has predominantly concentrated on the transferability issues of non-targeted attacks,whereas enhancing the transferability of targeted adversarial examples presents even greater challenges.Traditional attack techniques typically employ cross-entropy as a loss measure,iteratively adjusting adversarial examples to match target categories.However,their inherent limitations restrict their broad applicability and transferability across different models.To address the aforementioned challenges,this study proposes a novel targeted adversarial attack method aimed at enhancing the transferability of adversarial samples across object detection models.Within the framework of iterative attacks,we devise a new objective function designed to mitigate consistency issues arising from cumulative noise and to enhance the separation between target and non-target categories(logit margin).Secondly,a data augmentation framework incorporating random erasing and color transformations is introduced into targeted adversarial attacks.This enhances the diversity of gradients,preventing overfitting to white-box models.Lastly,perturbations are applied only within the specified object’s bounding box to reduce the perturbation range,enhancing attack stealthiness.Experiments were conducted on the Microsoft Common Objects in Context(MS COCO)dataset using You Only Look Once version 3(YOLOv3),You Only Look Once version 8(YOLOv8),Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks(Faster R-CNN),and RetinaNet.The results demonstrate a significant advantage of the proposed method in black-box settings.Among these,the success rate of RetinaNet transfer attacks reached a maximum of 82.59%.
文摘In the era of the Internet of Things(IoT),the proliferation of connected devices has raised security concerns,increasing the risk of intrusions into diverse systems.Despite the convenience and efficiency offered by IoT technology,the growing number of IoT devices escalates the likelihood of attacks,emphasizing the need for robust security tools to automatically detect and explain threats.This paper introduces a deep learning methodology for detecting and classifying distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks,addressing a significant security concern within IoT environments.An effective procedure of deep transfer learning is applied to utilize deep learning backbones,which is then evaluated on two benchmarking datasets of DDoS attacks in terms of accuracy and time complexity.By leveraging several deep architectures,the study conducts thorough binary and multiclass experiments,each varying in the complexity of classifying attack types and demonstrating real-world scenarios.Additionally,this study employs an explainable artificial intelligence(XAI)AI technique to elucidate the contribution of extracted features in the process of attack detection.The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method,achieving a recall of 99.39%by the XAI bidirectional long short-term memory(XAI-BiLSTM)model.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant(62102189,62122032,61972205)the National Social Sciences Foundation of China under Grant 2022-SKJJ-C-082+2 种基金the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK20200807NUDT Scientific Research Program under Grant(JS21-4,ZK21-43)Guangdong Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar under Grant 2023B1515020041.
文摘In recent years,deep learning has been the mainstream technology for fingerprint liveness detection(FLD)tasks because of its remarkable performance.However,recent studies have shown that these deep fake fingerprint detection(DFFD)models are not resistant to attacks by adversarial examples,which are generated by the introduction of subtle perturbations in the fingerprint image,allowing the model to make fake judgments.Most of the existing adversarial example generation methods are based on gradient optimization,which is easy to fall into local optimal,resulting in poor transferability of adversarial attacks.In addition,the perturbation added to the blank area of the fingerprint image is easily perceived by the human eye,leading to poor visual quality.In response to the above challenges,this paper proposes a novel adversarial attack method based on local adaptive gradient variance for DFFD.The ridge texture area within the fingerprint image has been identified and designated as the region for perturbation generation.Subsequently,the images are fed into the targeted white-box model,and the gradient direction is optimized to compute gradient variance.Additionally,an adaptive parameter search method is proposed using stochastic gradient ascent to explore the parameter values during adversarial example generation,aiming to maximize adversarial attack performance.Experimental results on two publicly available fingerprint datasets show that ourmethod achieves higher attack transferability and robustness than existing methods,and the perturbation is harder to perceive.
基金supported by the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.61521003the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.62072467 and 62002383.
文摘Serverless computing is a promising paradigm in cloud computing that greatly simplifies cloud programming.With serverless computing,developers only provide function code to serverless platform,and these functions are invoked by its driven events.Nonetheless,security threats in serverless computing such as vulnerability-based security threats have become the pain point hindering its wide adoption.The ideas in proactive defense such as redundancy,diversity and dynamic provide promising approaches to protect against cyberattacks.However,these security technologies are mostly applied to serverless platform based on“stacked”mode,as they are designed independent with serverless computing.The lack of security consideration in the initial design makes it especially challenging to achieve the all life cycle protection for serverless application with limited cost.In this paper,we present ATSSC,a proactive defense enabled attack tolerant serverless platform.ATSSC integrates the characteristic of redundancy,diversity and dynamic into serverless seamless to achieve high-level security and efficiency.Specifically,ATSSC constructs multiple diverse function replicas to process the driven events and performs cross-validation to verify the results.In order to create diverse function replicas,both software diversity and environment diversity are adopted.Furthermore,a dynamic function refresh strategy is proposed to keep the clean state of serverless functions.We implement ATSSC based on Kubernetes and Knative.Analysis and experimental results demonstrate that ATSSC can effectively protect serverless computing against cyberattacks with acceptable costs.
文摘The RPL(IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks)protocol is essential for efficient communi-cation within the Internet of Things(IoT)ecosystem.Despite its significance,RPL’s susceptibility to attacks remains a concern.This paper presents a comprehensive simulation-based analysis of the RPL protocol’s vulnerability to the decreased rank attack in both static andmobilenetwork environments.We employ the Random Direction Mobility Model(RDM)for mobile scenarios within the Cooja simulator.Our systematic evaluation focuses on critical performance metrics,including Packet Delivery Ratio(PDR),Average End to End Delay(AE2ED),throughput,Expected Transmission Count(ETX),and Average Power Consumption(APC).Our findings illuminate the disruptive impact of this attack on the routing hierarchy,resulting in decreased PDR and throughput,increased AE2ED,ETX,and APC.These results underscore the urgent need for robust security measures to protect RPL-based IoT networks.Furthermore,our study emphasizes the exacerbated impact of the attack in mobile scenarios,highlighting the evolving security requirements of IoT networks.
基金The Major Key Project of PCL,Grant/Award Number:PCL2022A03National Natural Science Foundation of China,Grant/Award Numbers:61976064,62372137Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China,Grant/Award Number:LZ22F020007。
文摘Adversarial attacks have been posing significant security concerns to intelligent systems,such as speaker recognition systems(SRSs).Most attacks assume the neural networks in the systems are known beforehand,while black-box attacks are proposed without such information to meet practical situations.Existing black-box attacks improve trans-ferability by integrating multiple models or training on multiple datasets,but these methods are costly.Motivated by the optimisation strategy with spatial information on the perturbed paths and samples,we propose a Dual Spatial Momentum Iterative Fast Gradient Sign Method(DS-MI-FGSM)to improve the transferability of black-box at-tacks against SRSs.Specifically,DS-MI-FGSM only needs a single data and one model as the input;by extending to the data and model neighbouring spaces,it generates adver-sarial examples against the integrating models.To reduce the risk of overfitting,DS-MI-FGSM also introduces gradient masking to improve transferability.The authors conduct extensive experiments regarding the speaker recognition task,and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of their method,which can achieve up to 92%attack success rate on the victim model in black-box scenarios with only one known model.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12247104 and 12047503)。
文摘Kinetically constrained spin systems are toy models of supercooled liquids and amorphous solids. In this perspective,we revisit the prototypical Fredrickson–Andersen(FA) kinetically constrained model from the viewpoint of K-core combinatorial optimization. Each kinetic cluster of the FA system, containing all the mutually visitable microscopic occupation configurations, is exactly the solution space of a specific instance of the K-core attack problem. The whole set of different jammed occupation patterns of the FA system is the configuration space of an equilibrium K-core problem. Based on recent theoretical results achieved on the K-core attack and equilibrium K-core problems, we discuss the thermodynamic spin glass phase transitions and the maximum occupation density of the fully unfrozen FA kinetic cluster, and the minimum occupation density and extreme vulnerability of the partially frozen(jammed) kinetic clusters. The equivalence between K-core attack and the fully unfrozen FA kinetic cluster also implies a new way of sampling K-core attack solutions.
文摘The rapid increase in vehicle traffic volume in modern societies has raised the need to develop innovative solutions to reduce traffic congestion and enhance traffic management efficiency.Revolutionary advanced technology,such as Intelligent Transportation Systems(ITS),enables improved traffic management,helps eliminate congestion,and supports a safer environment.ITS provides real-time information on vehicle traffic and transportation systems that can improve decision-making for road users.However,ITS suffers from routing issues at the network layer when utilising Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks(VANETs).This is because each vehicle plays the role of a router in this network,which leads to a complex vehicle communication network,causing issues such as repeated link breakages between vehicles resulting from the mobility of the network and rapid topological variation.This may lead to loss or delay in packet transmissions;this weakness can be exploited in routing attacks,such as black-hole and gray-hole attacks,that threaten the availability of ITS services.In this paper,a Blockchain-based smart contracts model is proposed to offer convenient and comprehensive security mechanisms,enhancing the trustworthiness between vehicles.Self-Classification Blockchain-Based Contracts(SCBC)and Voting-Classification Blockchain-Based Contracts(VCBC)are utilised in the proposed protocol.The results show that VCBC succeeds in attaining better results in PDR and TP performance even in the presence of Blackhole and Grayhole attacks.
基金supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61701197)in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(No.2021YFA1000500(4))in part by the 111 Project(No.B23008).
文摘In vehicle edge computing(VEC),asynchronous federated learning(AFL)is used,where the edge receives a local model and updates the global model,effectively reducing the global aggregation latency.Due to different amounts of local data,computing capabilities and locations of the vehicles,renewing the global model with same weight is inappropriate.The above factors will affect the local calculation time and upload time of the local model,and the vehicle may also be affected by Byzantine attacks,leading to the deterioration of the vehicle data.However,based on deep reinforcement learning(DRL),we can consider these factors comprehensively to eliminate vehicles with poor performance as much as possible and exclude vehicles that have suffered Byzantine attacks before AFL.At the same time,when aggregating AFL,we can focus on those vehicles with better performance to improve the accuracy and safety of the system.In this paper,we proposed a vehicle selection scheme based on DRL in VEC.In this scheme,vehicle’s mobility,channel conditions with temporal variations,computational resources with temporal variations,different data amount,transmission channel status of vehicles as well as Byzantine attacks were taken into account.Simulation results show that the proposed scheme effectively improves the safety and accuracy of the global model.
基金This study was funded by the Chongqing Normal University Startup Foundation for PhD(22XLB021)was also supported by the Open Research Project of the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology,Zhejiang University,China(No.ICT2023B40).
文摘Internet of Things(IoT)is vulnerable to data-tampering(DT)attacks.Due to resource limitations,many anomaly detection systems(ADSs)for IoT have high false positive rates when detecting DT attacks.This leads to the misreporting of normal data,which will impact the normal operation of IoT.To mitigate the impact caused by the high false positive rate of ADS,this paper proposes an ADS management scheme for clustered IoT.First,we model the data transmission and anomaly detection in clustered IoT.Then,the operation strategy of the clustered IoT is formulated as the running probabilities of all ADSs deployed on every IoT device.In the presence of a high false positive rate in ADSs,to deal with the trade-off between the security and availability of data,we develop a linear programming model referred to as a security trade-off(ST)model.Next,we develop an analysis framework for the ST model,and solve the ST model on an IoT simulation platform.Last,we reveal the effect of some factors on the maximum combined detection rate through theoretical analysis.Simulations show that the ADS management scheme can mitigate the data unavailability loss caused by the high false positive rates in ADS.
文摘Introduction: On the 5<sup>th</sup> of June 2022, an incident of a mass attack following multiple gunshots and explosions occurred in a community in Ondo State Nigeria. This study aims to assess the mental health status of victims of the mass attack to guide further interventions among them. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among victims of a mass attack in Owo community, Ondo State. A total of 209 affected victims were interviewed on socio-demographic characteristics, symptoms of anxiety (AD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), threat experienced, and mental health support received. A 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and 9-item Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) scale were used to assess the mental health status of the victims. A point was assigned to respondents who reported the symptoms of GAD, with a maximum score of 7 attained. For GAD, scores were categorized as follows: 1 - 2 as mild, 2 - 3 as minimal, 4 - 5 as moderate and 6 - 7 as severe. The PTSD symptoms were rated using a 5-point Likert scale response, and assigned the following points;4 = extremely, 3 = quite a bit, 2 = moderate, 1 = a little bit and 0 = not at all. From a maximum score of 36, participants with scores 18 and above were categorized as those with provisional PTSD. The independent samples t-test and correlational analysis were used to determine the association between PTSD score and other independent variables, with an alpha level of significance set at 0.05. Results: Generally, 38 (18.2%) of the respondents had severe AD. About half (89;42.6%) were categorized as those with provisional PTSD. The mean level of both AD (3.40 ± 2.26) and PTSD (16.51 ± 7.63) score is higher among those who were married compared to those not married (anxiety disorder;2.52 ± 2.20, P = 0.005 and PTSD;13.20 ± 8.86, P = 0.004). Respondents who have been counseled by a healthcare worker had a higher mean level (15.89 ± 7.58) of provisional PTSD compared to those not counseled by a healthcare worker (13.56 ± 9.22, P = 0.046). The level of PTSD score increased with a higher age group (r = 0.21, P = 0.003). Conclusions: The results show that the mass attack had psychological consequences among a high proportion of the victims, particularly, those married and in the older age groups. This suggests the need for continuous supportive counseling targeting these affected groups, and considering other factors moderating the effectiveness of counseling among them in future interventions.
文摘This case report investigates the manifestation of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) through recurrent Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIAs) in an 82-year-old patient. Despite initial diagnostic complexities, cerebral angiography-MRI revealed features indicative of CAA. Symptomatic treatment resulted in improvement, but the patient later developed a fatal hematoma. The discussion navigates the intricate therapeutic landscape of repetitive TIAs in the elderly with cardiovascular risk factors, emphasizing the pivotal role of cerebral MRI and meticulous bleeding risk management. The conclusion stresses the importance of incorporating SWI sequences, specifically when suspecting a cardioembolic TIA, as a diagnostic measure to explore and exclude CAA in the differential diagnosis. This case report provides valuable insights into these challenges, highlighting the need to consider CAA in relevant cases.