Collaborative Semantic Web Browsing with Magpie

E-commerce, e-mail, e-greeting, e-this, and e-that everywhere you turn there is a new "e" word for an internet or Web application. We, at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, have been "e-nlightened" and will discuss in this report the implementation of a web-based radiology information system (RIS) in our radiology division or "e-radiology" division. The application, IDXRad Version 10.0 from IDX Corp, Burlington, VT, is in use at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and has both intranet (for use in Radiology) and internet (referring physician viewing) modules. We will concentrate on the features of using a web browser for the application's front-end, including easy prototyping for screen review, easier mock-ups of demonstrations by vendors and developers, and easier training as more people become web-addicted. Project communication can be facilitated with an internal project web page, and use of the web browser can accommodate quicker turnaround of software upgrades as the software code is centrally located. Compared with other technologies, including client/server, there is a smaller roll out cost when using a standard web browser. However, the new technology requires a change and changes are never implemented without challenges. A seasoned technologist using a legacy system can enter data quicker using function keys than using a graphical user interface and pointing and clicking through a series of pop-up windows. Also, effective use of a web browser depends on intuitive design for it to be easily implemented and accepted by the user. Some software packages will not work on both of the popular web browsers and then are tailored to specific release levels. As computer-based patient records become a standard, patient confidentiality must be enforced. The technical design and application security features that support the web-based software package will be discussed. Also web technologies have their own implementation issues.

Web browsers are a key enabler of a wide range of online services, from shopping and email to banking and health services. Because these services frequently involve handling sensitive data, a wide range of web browser security policies and mechanisms has been implemented or proposed to mitigate the dangers posed by malicious code and sites. This paper describes an approach for specifying and enforcing flexible information-flow policies on the Chromium web browser. Complementing efforts that focus on information-flow enforcement on JavaScript, our approach focuses on an existing browser and encompasses a broad range of browser features, from pages and scripts to DOM elements, events, persistent state, and extensions. In our approach, which is a coarse-grained, light-weight implementation of taint tracking, entities in the browser are annotated with information-flow labels that specify policy and track information flows. We develop a detailed formal model of our approach, for which we prove noninterference. We also develop a corresponding prototype system built on top of Chromium. We demonstrate, and experimentally confirm, that the system can enforce many existing browser policies, as well as practically useful policies beyond those enforceable in standard web browsers.

Cryptography is one of the key elements in providing security for modern e‐commerce systems. It is well known that software‐based encryption has built‐in security weaknesses due to storing and managing digital certificates/keys in a high‐risk environment such as a local hard disk or software. This makes embedded hardware encryption a superior solution. However, most existing embedded hardware encryption modules need additional dedicated software in order to implement a secure e‐commerce application, which increases cost as well as adds complexity. In this paper, a new embedded hardware DSP (digital signal processor) encryption module, using the RSA (Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman) algorithm, is developed for secure e‐commerce transactions from the client side. The goal is to seamlessly integrate the embedded DSP hardware encryption module, which combines computational power and flexibility in programming, with a widely available web browser that provides the required e‐commerce functions. The integrated system can store and process security sensitive data inside the plug‐in hardware. The proposed scheme tries to maximize security strength while limiting overheads by utilizing a widely available web browser to perform e‐commerce functions such as product searching, etc. A fully functional web e‐commerce system has been developed as a proof of concept. Our major contribution is a design of a functional RSA plug‐in encryptor which can store and encrypt sensitive information originated from the e‐commerce process using standard web browsers. Implementation details addressing challenging issues such as big integer, large message, and communication components have been provided which have never been reported in the public literature. This can be very useful for real‐life industry security applications. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Chapter 59 - Virtual Private Networks

Java, in combination with Web browsers' abilities to load and execute untrusted Java applets in a secure fashion, has made computing over the Web a possibility. Now the challenge is to fully utilize this potential, given the limitations imposed by browsers. This paper presents KnittingFactory, an infrastructure to facilitate Web-based computing, which addresses this challenge. It supports building distributed applications, specifically those consisting of Java applets executing in browsers. It is composed of: (i) a distributed name service to assist users in locating other participants of a distributed computation via standard browsers; (ii) an embedded class server to eliminate the need for external HTTP servers for serving applet code; and (iii) a technique for direct applet-to-applet communication. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of KnittingFactory and demonstrate its benefits by applying it to three distinct areas of Web-based computing. First, we apply our distributed name service to a client/server architecture to enable RMI clients to locate servers on unknown hosts. Second, we use the embedded class server to extend the capability of Charlotte, a parallel computing environment. Finally, we build a collaborative application using our direct applet-to-applet communication technique which does not require a forwarding agent. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Development of web browser prototype with embedded classification capability for mitigating Cross-Site Scripting attacks

I. Introduction Studies reveal that often group members collaborate when searching for information even if they were not explicitly asked to collaborate [1]. The activity that involves a group of people engaging in a common information seeking task is called Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS). Over the past few years, CIS research has focused on providing solutions and frameworks to support the process [2]. However, work in this field to date has always assumed that information seekers engaged in CIS activity are using the same access modality, the visual modality. The attention on this modality has failed to address the needs of users who employ different access modalities such as haptic and/or audio. Visual Impaired (VI) employees in a workplace may often have to collaborate with their sighted team members when searching the web. Given that the VI individual's search behaviour is challenged by poor web design and the shortcomings of current assistive technology [3][4]; collaboratively engaging in w...

Drive-by-download attacks are client-side attacks that originate from web servers that are visited by web browsers. While many web browsers are vulnerable to the drive-by-download attacks, the cost of detecting malicious web pages that launch drive-by-download attacks is expensive. High-interaction client honeypots are security devices capable of detecting malicious web pages; however, their slow and expensive operations in web page visiting have been considered as a problem. The high-interaction client honeypots employ a visitation algorithm to pinpoint which page has made an unauthorized change of system state when any unauthorized change of the system state occurred after visiting suspicious web pages. To improve the performance of the high-interaction client honeypots, we propose a new visitation algorithm, logarithmic divide-and-conquer (LDAC), for identifying malicious web pages. The LDAC algorithm is an enhanced version of the existing binary divide-and-conquer (BDAC) algorithm. If any system state is abnormally changed after having visited k suspicious web pages concurrently, our LDAC algorithm divides the buffer of k pages into [log2k] pieces and recursively visits the pieces until the malicious page or pages are identified, while the BDAC splits the buffer into k/2 portions. Experimental results show that the LDAC has improved performance of the system up to 15 percent compared to the BDAC algorithm.

We present the Virtual Beamline (VBL) application, an interactive web-based platform for visualizing high-intensity laser–matter interactions using particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, with future potential for experimental data visualization. These interactions include ion acceleration, electron acceleration, γ-flash generation, electron–positron pair production, and attosecond and spiral pulse generation. Developed at the ELI Beamlines facility, VBL integrates a custom-built WebGL engine with WebXR-based Virtual Reality (VR) support, allowing users to explore complex plasma dynamics in non-VR mode on a computer screen or in fully immersive VR mode using a head-mounted display. The application runs directly in a standard web browser, ensuring broad accessibility. VBL enhances the visualization of PIC simulations by efficiently processing and rendering four main data types: point particles, 1D lines, 2D textures, and 3D volumes. By utilizing interactive 3D visualization, it overcomes the limitations of traditional 2D representations, offering enhanced spatial understanding and real-time manipulation of visualization parameters such as time steps, data layers, and colormaps. Users can interactively explore the visualized data by moving their body or using a controller for navigation, zooming, and rotation. These interactive capabilities improve data exploration and interpretation, making VBL a valuable tool for both scientific analysis and educational outreach. The visualizations are hosted online and freely accessible on our server, providing researchers, the general public, and broader audiences with an interactive tool to explore complex plasma physics simulations. By offering an intuitive and dynamic approach to large-scale datasets, VBL enhances both scientific research and knowledge dissemination in high-intensity laser–matter physics.

Advanced biological imaging analysis platforms such as Activity Quantification and Analysis (AQuA2) enable accurate spatiotemporal activity analysis across diverse cell populations within many species. These tools are increasingly important for investigating cellular signaling dynamics and behavior. However, despite advances in the accuracy and species capability of AQuA2, it remains computationally demanding for analysis of long time-series datasets and requires all users to maintain a MATLAB license, which may limit accessibility and large-scale deployment. To address these limitations, we have designed and made available AQuA2-Cloud, a portable software stack and web platform developed as an improvement and further evolution of AQuA2. This container-deployable system permits multi-user cloud-based high accuracy activity quantification with intuitive workflows, export of analysis data and project files, and comparable processing times. The platform offers integrated features such as in-browser analysis control interfaces, asynchronous program state control, multiple users and user management, support for unreliable connections, file uploading and downloading via web browsers and File Transfer Protocol, and centralized organization of analysis output. AQuA2-Cloud constitutes a cloud-native solution for laboratories or research groups seeking to centralize analysis of spatiotemporal biological imaging datasets while reducing software installation and licensing barriers for end users. The platform enables researchers with minimal technical expertise to perform advanced bioimaging analysis through standard web browsers while maintaining the analytical capabilities of AQuA2. AQuA2-Cloud source code, deployment procedures, and documentation are freely available at (https://github.com/yu-lab-vt/AQuA2-Cloud).

Bugscope is a second generation educational project in the World Wide Laboratory that provides web browser based control of scientific imaging instrumentation using the Internet. We had previously demonstrated web based remote access to sophisticated scientific imaging systems several years ago in the Chickscope project. The primary goal of the Bugscope project is to demonstrate that relatively low cost, sustainable access to an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) can be made available to K-12 classrooms. Methods: To participate in the project, a classroom submits a web based application that describes how they plan to use the microscope. If the application is accepted, a one hour session on the ESEM is scheduled and the classroom mails in their chosen specimen. During their access time, classrooms use a standard web browser over the Internet to control and acquire images from the ESEM (Philips/FEI XL-30FEG).

Bugscope is a new educational project in the World Wide Laboratory. The World Wide Laboratory provides Web browser based control of scientific imaging instrumentation using the Internet [1]. Providing K-12 classrooms with web based remote access to sophisticated scientific imaging systems was initially demonstrated by us in 1996 in the Chickscope project [2,3]. Chickscope allowed students to study chicken embryo development using a remotely controlled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system from their classrooms. While the Chickscope project was highly successful, the resources required to provide operational support for the remote imaging aspects of the project for a small number of classrooms were enormous and the project was not sustainable. The Bugscope project builds on the methods developed and the lessons learned from the Chickscope project. The primary goal is to demonstrate that relatively low cost, sustainable access to an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) can be made available to K-12 classrooms to examine arthropods.Methods: Classrooms use a standard web browser over the Internet to control and acquire images from a Philips XL-30FEG ESEM. The architecture to support remote acquisition is shown in fig. 1. The client/server control architecture for the ESEM remote control server is based on the emScope control library [4].

In the late twentieth century, information and communication technologies (ICTs) came to the service of education in order to change and facilitate the learning process in pedagogical settings. In order to support the learning process of children and/or students, teachers –along with implying effective teaching principles and techniques in their classrooms −may benefit the potential of the computer and the web-based programs. The educational program Hot Potatoes, innovated by Half-Baked Software, Inc., was designed to allow educators to create interactive, Web-based exercises that can be used by learners at any Internet terminal with a standard Web browser. The software favors six different applications, namely: J Quiz, J Cloze, J Match, J Mix, J Cross and Masher; Moreover, Hot Potatoes program has also the capability to create interactive Web exercises without programming knowledge. With the help of the above mentioned six modules, educators are able to create different interactive web-based exercises and to combine them into one unit and publish them as Web Page. As such, the current study sheds more light on the use and application of Hot Potatoes software and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this interactive, Web authoring, pedagogical program.

With conventional regression test tools for Web applications, it is difficult to specify the values to be verified that are repeated output inside loop statements. We need to select each of these values displayed in Web pages with the mouse. This paper presents a method that automates regression testing of Web applications on the server side. This method makes it easy to specify values to be verified and enables us to specify them when we develop Web applications. We can directly check the verification results on the Web pages that are shown in the Web browser. If we find a fault, we can even directly modify a part of the server program in the Web browser that corresponds to the currently displayed Web page.

Parallelized sub-resource loading for web rendering engine