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Play Integrity API
Play Integrity API (formerly known as SafetyNet) consists of several application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by the Google Play Services to support security sensitive applications and enforce DRM. Currently, these APIs include device integrity verification, app verification, recaptcha and web address verification. It uses an environment called DroidGuard to perform the attestation. == Attestation == The SafetyNet Attestation API, one of the APIs under the SafetyNet umbrella, provides verification that the integrity of the device is not compromised. In practice, non-official ROMs such as LineageOS fail the hardware attestation and thus prevent the user from using a non-compliant ROM with third-party apps (mainly banking) that require the API. Due to this, some consider this a monopolistic practice deterring the entrance of competing mobile operating systems in the market. It requires a network connection to Google servers and validates the hardware signatures. Amongst the checks, the API looks for bootloader unlock status, ROM signatures, kernel strings, it also uses AVB2.0 and dm-verity attestations. Upon successful checks, Google Play will mark the device as Certified. The attestation runs in an environment called DroidGuard (com.google.android.gms.unstable). The SafetyNet Attestation API (one of the four APIs under the SafetyNet umbrella) has been deprecated. As of 6 October 2023, Google planned to replace it with the Play Integrity API by the end of January 2025. The transition ended on 20 May 2025, breaking applications which hadn't been updated. These attestations are offered by Google Play Services and thus are not available on free Android environments, like AOSP. Therefore, developers can require the API to be available and may refuse to execute on AOSP builds. == Google Play Protect == Under the same umbrella, Play Protect is a mechanism to find and remove "vulnerable" apps from one's Android device as well as store apps. Although it's meant to scan for malware-containing apps, it also looks for non-DRM compliant apps. == Criticism == Multiple groups have criticised SafetyNet and the Play Integrity API. Criticisms include that it offers weaker protection compared to alternatives such as Android's hardware attestation API, which provides a stronger form of verification while having the ability to remain compatible with more secure Android operating systems like GrapheneOS. Critics argued it undermines competition by effectively requiring developers to rely on Google's proprietary services, strengthening its monopoly over the Android ecosystem and disadvantaging alternative, privacy-focused operating systems. Users have also developed tools, such as the Play Integrity Fix module for Magisk/KernelSU/APatch, which tricks the attestation using leaked fingerprints of vulnerable devices. Furthermore, some have questioned the effectiveness of the attestation, claiming it does not deliver the level of security promised by Google and instead serves more as a form of vendor lock-in than a meaningful security measure. Activists have also raised concerns that it may violate antitrust and competition laws, like the Digital Markets Act.
Spleak
Spleak was an IM platform where users could publish and rate content. It existed in the form of six bots covering as many subject areas: CelebSpleak, SportSpleak, VoteSpleak, TVSpleak, GameSpleak, and StyleSpleak. == Overview == Users can add a "multi-Spleak" (which contains all of the different Spleak bots in one) or add the separate bots to their IM buddy lists on MSN and AIM. Users are also allowed access to Spleak online by using a CelebSpleak, SportSpleak, or VoteSpleak widget, or through the CelebSpleak and SportSpleak applications with Facebook. Spleak was an alternate reality game and is moving to its own company, Spleak Media Network. "Celebrate Spleak" was introduced throughout 2007, launched in 2008, and was forced to retire in 2009. == Key people == Spleak was co-founded by Morten Lund and Nicolaj Reffstrup. The company's chief executive officer is Morrie Eisenburg; Josh Scott is Vice President in Product and Tyler Wells is Vice President in Engineering.
Huroof
Huroof (Arabic: حروف, lit. 'letters') is an Android kids application produced by the Islamic State, specifically the Islamic States' Al-Himmah Library, which is targeted towards kids in order to teach kids the Arabic alphabet, and to also get kids to support the Islamic State and its practices. == Application == Huroof uses child-like appearances on the main menu, and throughout multiple of Huroof's in-game games for learning the alphabet, a lot of the games reference jihadist concepts, including imagery of weapons (such as missile, tank, cannon, sword,...), 'violent' images, as well as Islamic State imagery, including the flag of the Islamic State, Huroof uses nasheeds from Ajnad Media Foundation for audio production in the app. Reportedly, Huroof was released via Telegram channels of the Islamic State, as well as other file sharing websites. It is not the first moblie app released by Islamic State, but it is the first time they released a moblie application targeting children. === Nasheed game === In the Huroof app, there's a game where you listen to a radio, with the Al-Bayan logo on it, and learn the Arabic alphabet while the nasheed plays. === Writing game === In Huroof, there's a game where you can write out letters of the Arabic alphabet, as well as numbers while a small child tells you what they are. === Letter choosing game === In the app, there's a game they shows you images, and you choose which letter that image/item starts with.
Geometric hashing
In computer science, geometric hashing is a method for efficiently finding two-dimensional objects represented by discrete points that have undergone an affine transformation, though extensions exist to other object representations and transformations. In an off-line step, the objects are encoded by treating each pair of points as a geometric basis. The remaining points can be represented in an invariant fashion with respect to this basis using two parameters. For each point, its quantized transformed coordinates are stored in the hash table as a key, and indices of the basis points as a value. Then a new pair of basis points is selected, and the process is repeated. In the on-line (recognition) step, randomly selected pairs of data points are considered as candidate bases. For each candidate basis, the remaining data points are encoded according to the basis and possible correspondences from the object are found in the previously constructed table. The candidate basis is accepted if a sufficiently large number of the data points index a consistent object basis. Geometric hashing was originally suggested in computer vision for object recognition in 2D and 3D, but later was applied to different problems such as structural alignment of proteins. == Geometric hashing in computer vision == Geometric hashing is a method used for object recognition. Let’s say that we want to check if a model image can be seen in an input image. This can be accomplished with geometric hashing. The method could be used to recognize one of the multiple objects in a base, in this case the hash table should store not only the pose information but also the index of object model in the base. === Example === For simplicity, this example will not use too many point features and assume that their descriptors are given by their coordinates only (in practice local descriptors such as SIFT could be used for indexing). ==== Training Phase ==== Find the model's feature points. Assume that 5 feature points are found in the model image with the coordinates ( 12 , 17 ) ; {\displaystyle (12,17);} ( 45 , 13 ) ; {\displaystyle (45,13);} ( 40 , 46 ) ; {\displaystyle (40,46);} ( 20 , 35 ) ; {\displaystyle (20,35);} ( 35 , 25 ) {\displaystyle (35,25)} , see the picture. Introduce a basis to describe the locations of the feature points. For 2D space and similarity transformation the basis is defined by a pair of points. The point of origin is placed in the middle of the segment connecting the two points (P2, P4 in our example), the x ′ {\displaystyle x'} axis is directed towards one of them, the y ′ {\displaystyle y'} is orthogonal and goes through the origin. The scale is selected such that absolute value of x ′ {\displaystyle x'} for both basis points is 1. Describe feature locations with respect to that basis, i.e. compute the projections to the new coordinate axes. The coordinates should be discretised to make recognition robust to noise, we take the bin size 0.25. We thus get the coordinates ( − 0.75 , − 1.25 ) ; {\displaystyle (-0.75,-1.25);} ( 1.00 , 0.00 ) ; {\displaystyle (1.00,0.00);} ( − 0.50 , 1.25 ) ; {\displaystyle (-0.50,1.25);} ( − 1.00 , 0.00 ) ; {\displaystyle (-1.00,0.00);} ( 0.00 , 0.25 ) {\displaystyle (0.00,0.25)} Store the basis in a hash table indexed by the features (only transformed coordinates in this case). If there were more objects to match with, we should also store the object number along with the basis pair. Repeat the process for a different basis pair (Step 2). It is needed to handle occlusions. Ideally, all the non-colinear pairs should be enumerated. We provide the hash table after two iterations, the pair (P1, P3) is selected for the second one. Hash Table: Most hash tables cannot have identical keys mapped to different values. So in real life one won’t encode basis keys (1.0, 0.0) and (-1.0, 0.0) in a hash table. ==== Recognition Phase ==== Find interesting feature points in the input image. Choose an arbitrary basis. If there isn't a suitable arbitrary basis, then it is likely that the input image does not contain the target object. Describe coordinates of the feature points in the new basis. Quantize obtained coordinates as it was done before. Compare all the transformed point features in the input image with the hash table. If the point features are identical or similar, then increase the count for the corresponding basis (and the type of object, if any). For each basis such that the count exceeds a certain threshold, verify the hypothesis that it corresponds to an image basis chosen in Step 2. Transfer the image coordinate system to the model one (for the supposed object) and try to match them. If successful, the object is found. Otherwise, go back to Step 2. === Finding mirrored pattern === It seems that this method is only capable of handling scaling, translation, and rotation. However, the input image may contain the object in mirror transform. Therefore, geometric hashing should be able to find the object, too. There are two ways to detect mirrored objects. For the vector graph, make the left side positive, and the right side negative. Multiplying the x position by -1 will give the same result. Use 3 points for the basis. This allows detecting mirror images (or objects). Actually, using 3 points for the basis is another approach for geometric hashing. === Geometric hashing in higher-dimensions === Similar to the example above, hashing applies to higher-dimensional data. For three-dimensional data points, three points are also needed for the basis. The first two points define the x-axis, and the third point defines the y-axis (with the first point). The z-axis is perpendicular to the created axis using the right-hand rule. Notice that the order of the points affects the resulting basis
Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales
Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales, or ADAMS was a $35 million DARPA project designed to identify patterns and anomalies in very large data sets. It is under DARPA's Information Innovation office and began in 2011 and ended in August 2014 The project was intended to detect and prevent insider threats such as "a soldier in good mental health becoming homicidal or suicidal", an "innocent insider becoming malicious", or "a government employee [who] abuses access privileges to share classified information". Specific cases mentioned are Nadal Malik Hasan and WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning. Commercial applications may include finance. The intended recipients of the system output are operators in the counterintelligence agencies. A final report was published on May 11, 2015, detailing a system known as Anomaly Detection Engine for Networks, or ADEN, developed by the University of Maryland, College Park, whose goal was to "identify malicious users within a network." Using multiple datasets from Wikipedia, Slashdot, and others, researchers were able to identify vandals and malicious users on a website using both conventional algorithms and artificial intelligence. The Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning was part of the ADAMS project. The Georgia Tech team includes noted high-performance computing researcher David Bader (computer scientist).
U-Net
U-Net is a convolutional neural network that was developed for image segmentation. The network is based on a fully convolutional neural network whose architecture was modified and extended to work with fewer training images and to yield more precise segmentation. Segmentation of a 512 × 512 image takes less than a second on a modern (2015) GPU using the U-Net architecture. The U-Net architecture has also been employed in diffusion models for iterative image denoising. This technology underlies many modern image generation models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. U-Net is also being explored for language models. Tokenization is not a separate step, allowing the model to more easily understand spelling and concurrently vectorizing / tokenizing higher level concepts. == Description == The U-Net architecture stems from the so-called "fully convolutional network". The main idea is to supplement a usual contracting network by successive layers, where pooling operations are replaced by upsampling operators. Hence these layers increase the resolution of the output. A successive convolutional layer can then learn to assemble a precise output based on this information. One important modification in U-Net is that there are a large number of feature channels in the upsampling part, which allow the network to propagate context information to higher resolution layers. As a consequence, the expansive path is more or less symmetric to the contracting part, and yields a u-shaped architecture. The network only uses the valid part of each convolution without any fully connected layers. To predict the pixels in the border region of the image, the missing context is extrapolated by mirroring the input image. This tiling strategy is important to apply the network to large images, since otherwise the resolution would be limited by the GPU memory. Recently, there had also been an interest in receptive field based U-Net models for medical image segmentation. == Network architecture == The network consists of a contracting path and an expansive path, which gives it the u-shaped architecture. The contracting path is a typical convolutional network that consists of repeated application of convolutions, each followed by a rectified linear unit (ReLU) and a max pooling operation. During the contraction, the spatial information is reduced while feature information is increased. The expansive pathway combines the feature and spatial information through a sequence of up-convolutions and concatenations with high-resolution features from the contracting path. == Applications == There are many applications of U-Net in biomedical image segmentation, such as brain image segmentation (''BRATS'') and liver image segmentation ("siliver07") as well as protein binding site prediction. U-Net implementations have also found use in the physical sciences, for example in the analysis of micrographs of materials. Variations of the U-Net have also been applied for medical image reconstruction. Here are some variants and applications of U-Net as follows: Pixel-wise regression using U-Net and its application on pansharpening; 3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation; TernausNet: U-Net with VGG11 Encoder Pre-Trained on ImageNet for Image Segmentation. Image-to-image translation to estimate fluorescent stains In binding site prediction of protein structure. == History == U-Net was created by Olaf Ronneberger, Philipp Fischer, Thomas Brox in 2015 and reported in the paper "U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation". It is an improvement and development of FCN: Evan Shelhamer, Jonathan Long, Trevor Darrell (2014). "Fully convolutional networks for semantic segmentation".