Postgraduate Study and Research Methods

Table of Contents
Overview................................................................................................................................ 3
Discussion of findings............................................................................................................. 5
Comparison............................................................................................................................ 7
Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 8
References........................................................................................................................... 10
 3

Overview

At present, where the world of technology is focusing on successfully implementing

autonomous concepts from running a factory to driving a car, today's most concerning

challenge faced by the world's developers is privacy. With the advancement of modern

technology evaluation on AI technology, self-driving cars are no longer just a concept; many

well-known automobiles industry has introduced their self-driving car model. But the

irresistible chaos of content popularity, the wide range of customer tastes and expectations,

and personal privacy issues pose challenges for developing active content caching solutions

in self-driving vehicles. In practice, self-driving cars utilize mobile connectivity methods

such as Wi-Fi or cellular networks in order to access the corresponding content hosts to aid

onboard units (OBUs) in providing the recently demanded infotainment items that are not

available at the OBUs. If the information required by the user is not stored in OBU, it will

automatically seek information from a neighbouring Road Side Unit (RSU) with a stronger

connection. Self-driving automobiles can quickly get information from the nearby RSU. In

case the information is not found in RSU, the self-driving vehicles will seek the required

information from other nearby self-driving automobiles through a next-hop base station

(MBS) or the core cloud until the required information is identified and downloaded. In this

scenario, they are exposed to hackers. At present, the Malware identification is still an

unsolved problem in modern technology. Although, with a dynamic Signature-based

detection approach, software-based identification can delete malicious programmes.

However, as obfuscation methods grow more widespread in malware, the scanners can be

readily hacked, allowing the virus to develop new characteristic sequences during execution.

In this paper, there will be a discussion of two papers where the privacy-related issues of
 4

modern self-driving vehicles and the importance of Hardware acceleration and machine

learning techniques are described.

Methods of research

The selected two papers are "Performance Monitoring Counter Based Intelligent Malware

Detection and Design Alternatives" and "Route-Based Proactive Content Caching Using Self-

Attention in Hierarchical Federated Learning." This section discusses how the authors of

these two papers conducted the research. In paper one, "Performance Monitoring Counter

Based Intelligent Malware Detection and Design Alternatives", the researcher utilized

experimental research methodology, where the researcher in the paper addressed Statistical

workload characterization, statistical distribution-based feature extraction (feature tailoring),

tradeoff calculation of identification time and accuracy, and design aspects for hardware-

based malware detection [1]. To investigate key issues of PMC-based malware detection, the

researchers focused on distinct phases: (i) statistical characterization of malware; (ii)

distribution-based feature selection; (iii) tradeoff analysis of detection time and accuracy; and

(iv) providing architectural design alternatives for hardware-based malware detection [1].

The researcher in the paper proposes two architectural designs for more effective malware

identification in real-time: "detection hardware with more performance monitoring counters,''

and "acceleration hardware with existing PMCs.'' for malware characterization, the researcher

utilizes PMC, which gathers data from the microprocessors. In order to collect data from

PMCs, the researcher utilizes Ubuntu 18.04 on the Intel Xeon processors (Skylake

microarchitecture). For gathering architectural data and characterizing each workload from a

view, 20 benign specimens and 20 malware specimens are being used in the research paper.

Researchers have identified a number of features that distinguish between malware and

malware based on data obtained from performance measurement counters [1].

 5

In the second paper, "Route-Based Proactive Content Caching Using Self-Attention in

Hierarchical Federated Learning", the researcher utilizes a mixed research methodology

where the researcher follows both experimental and secondary methods [2]. For secondary

data collection, the researcher utilizes various previously published journals and articles in

order to collect relevant data [2]. Here the researcher critically analyzed all the research

papers related to the data sharing method of self-driving cars. The researcher also mentioned

that most researchers use deep learning approaches to collect user characteristics to make

caching decisions for audiovisual information in self-driving cars [2]. Additionally, the

researcher describes the different methods and steps in collecting the relevant data. By

analyzing the secondary data, the researcher comes to the conclusion that most contemporary

studies, as well as those mentioned previously, are centred on centralized content caching.

The traditional centralized system, on the other hand, is hypersensitive to privacy, and not all

self-driving cars want to share the raw data/information with the central cloud or server (RSU

and MBS). In the experimental section, the researcher utilizes Self-driving cars, which are

public transport vehicles and go on the regular local routes daily [2].

Discussion of findings

From paper one, it is identified that malware is evolving day by day; therefore, malware

detection through hardware solutions has now become more crucial than ever. PMC's

behavioural data is being utilized in several current hardware solutions [1]. In malware

detection, there is a limited amount of data provided; therefore, the architectural selection of

features has become very challenging in terms of providing high-quality data. In order to

overcome this challenging factor, the researcher has proposed a metric that is called DoD or

Degree of Distribution. The results of the experiments conducted by the researcher showed

that by using machine learning methods, Degree of Distribution is able to distinguish

 6

malware from specimens as well as can deliver extremely accurate results. This extremely

accurate result is generated through the collaboration of machine learning methods and

statistical features with a reduced number of incidents. According to [1], hardware

acceleration components, as well as more PMC registers, are indeed essential for even more

effective real-time malware detection. Whenever the suggested detection system is

extensively used, it is quite likely that malicious software developers will be informed of the

extreme usage. Therefore, several steps are needed to be taken by the developers, including

updating the customized characteristics on a regular basis to keep them up to speed with the

newer malicious behaviours [1]. More precise architectural designs for a particular

acceleration will be examined in future studies to gain more efficiency in chip size, cost and

processing time. Malware workloads must be structurally classified so those specific

architectural aspects can be mirrored in the hardware architecture of the identification

module.

In paper two, the researcher discovered that since OBUs mainly cache content for quick and

periodic accessibility, active content caching can be a promising approach to managing the

indexed spread of content queries from different users in self-driving vehicles. Moreover, the

researcher also found out that due to insufficient caching capability and the constant presence

of user queries for different items, OBUs cannot successfully select any content. In the

research paper, researchers have discussed in more detail the issue of active data caching in

self-driving automobiles [2]. By employing LSTM models in a classified FL framework,

researchers have demonstrated a self-focused strategy for active data caching in self-driving

automobiles [2]. In addition, researchers have used interleaved self-focus and LSTM-based

mechanisms as regional models to predict the preferred characteristics of domestic content.

The FL method was utilized by the researcher in order to communicate these sets of

parameters with RSUs and MBS for use in regional (and global) design construction using
 7

modelling aggregation at two different levels: RSUs and MBS. The simulation results show

that the proposed method improves the accuracy of cache detection, reduces content retrieval

costs and optimizes cache usage compared to conventional caching methods [2].

Comparison

In both papers, the researcher is concerned the data privacy and mentioned their concerns

about privacy issues that occur during sharing data or due to hacking. In both cases, the

victim has to face a lot of trouble. Therefore, the user needs to secure their data. In paper one,

it is observed that the researcher focuses on machine learning technology in order to improve

security issues. According to [1];[2], unfortunately, there are a number of problems with

using machine learning in security. For instance, useful label datasets are few, and the

computing workload is inadequate to overcome the massive amounts of data. In paper one,

the researcher stated that machine learning technology could successfully be able to classify

malware by utilizing several data types.

These two papers are based on two different problems; where the first paper described the

importance of hardware solutions in terms of malware detection [1]. The researcher stated

that statistical variations between malware workloads and benign workloads are defined

using data from performance counters to underline the significance of selecting architectural

elements for malware detection [1]. In the paper, the researcher stated that deleting malware

from a system through software-based static signature approaches might harm the host

processors; hardware security like ARM TRUSTZONE can easily delete malware without

harming the host processor [1]. The researcher also showed the concern that in terms of

deleting the malware, the hardware also needs to share physical resources, which might lead

to the risk of information leakage, but utilizing machine learning technology, this risk can

easily be minimized.
 8

In paper two, the researcher showed the concern of data sharing methods performed by

modern self-driving cars. In order to address data sharing concerns, the researcher

investigated the role of proactive content caching methods within autonomous vehicles. In a

multilayer network setting, researchers have created a low-complex content popularity

prediction model. To find out the characteristics of the popularity of domestic content in self-

driving automobiles, the researchers applied a self-focus strategy combined with an LSTM-

based instinct [2]. While leveraging the popular contents from other nearby vehicles, there

come the privacy issues; in order to deal with the issue, the researcher utilized a privacy-

preserving decentralized system Federated Learning model, which is a machine learning-

based algorithm. The researcher deployed this model to enhance the security of the self-

driving vehicle [2].

By critically analyzing both research papers carefully, it is identified that privacy is a serious

matter that most developers are determined to solve. Data theft, data loss and inauthentic

access to the system cause several problems as well as users. Therefore, in terms of

minimizing the effect, the first paper provides the most contribution to the present research.

The self-driving cars are new to the modern world, and fewer people have access to self-

driving cars; although the research paper is important at present concerning the fact that most

businesses and individuals are exposed to data theft, the first paper's contribution is more

effective than the second paper. Using machine learning algorithms in terms of reducing data

theft is an effective way. From both papers, it is clearly seen that machine learning

technology not only can help to minimize the cyber- attack additionally it holds many

promises. Therefore, many researchers are constantly working on this novel technology and

discovering its other effective uses.

 9

Conclusion

From the overall discussion, it is observed that, at present, where everything runs through

technology, data is considered the base of the technology. The issue of data theft and data

loss harms both individuals and businesses. The concept of implementing AI technology to

run various operations has gained popularity, and with rising popularity, the hackers are

targeting this novel technology. Therefore, researchers and developers need to develop new

methods of utilizing machine learning technology in terms of enhancing the security of the

system. In both papers, it is observed that the researcher lavaged the machine learning

technology to enhance the security of their proposed systems. In paper one, machine learning

technology is being utilized for the classification of malware. Additionally, the selection of a

machine learning algorithm is also considered one of the most important steps. In the second

paper, the researcher utilizes the Federated Averaging (FedAvg) algorithm, which is a

machine learning-based algorithm to tackle privacy issues. Although the utilization of

machine learning technology also has some disadvantages due to lack of research, by

considering the contribution of this novel technology in the modern world, many researchers

and developers are constantly working on this technology to enhance its functionality.
 10

References

[1] J. Pattee, S. M. Anik, και B. K. Lee, 'Performance monitoring counter-based intelligent

malware detection and design alternatives', IEEE Access, τ. 10, σσ. 28685–28692, 2022.

[2] S. Khanal, K. Thar, και E.-N. Huh, ‘Route-based proactive content caching using self-

attention in hierarchical federated learning’, IEEE Access, τ. 10, σσ. 29514–29527, 2022.