Optimizing open-source FPGA CAD tools

With forensics playing such a crucial role in today's data-driven world, this paper addresses the need to explore the different mobile device forensic tools available. Open Source and Commercial tools are two domains in close contention, with contrasting considerations such as accessibility and security. This paper aims at performing a comparative analysis of the various commercial and open source mobile device forensic tools, with respect to predefined software parameters and by employing a cross-device and test-driven approach. The test scenarios are structured to assess whether the selected tools possess the capabilities of a holistic one, while responding to threats and scenarios pertaining to the digital realm. The Commercial Tools under consideration are MOBILedit! Forensic (including Phone Forensics Express) and Cellebrite's UFED Physical Analyzer, while the Open Source Tools are — The Sleuth Kit (including Autopsy) and SANS SIFT. The result of this paper is a comparison matrix, which could help in identifying the best-fit solution as per the need of the investigation. It could also indicate the degree to which open source tools are comparable to (or better than) their commercial counterparts, and answer questions like — Can open source tools be a suitable replacement for the proprietary tools? Can this in reality, be a feasible shift for the forensic industry?

Digital Systems plays an important role in today’s modern technology. The practical implementation of digital circuits in laboratories leads to a complex wired circuits and testing finds difficult. The damage of ICs, breadboards due to complexity needs replacement. This paper disseminates the virtual use of all the components using an open source tool. Digital circuits are of combinational logic circuits and sequential circuits. Implementation of combinational circuits using logic gates in virtual mode is described. Autodesk Tinkercad is an open-source software tool for the development of system. The design of combinational circuits such as Adder, Subtractor, Encoder, Decoder, Code converters are implemented with ICs using Tinkercad tool.

Many open-source (OS) tools exist in the Modelica universe. OS tools have the benefit that they are freely available and fit well to Modelica as a nonproprietary language. However, the industrial usage of these tools seems to be very limited so far. Despite this fact, fluid modeling is possible if restrictions are taken into account. In this contribution, we propose to use benchmark models for the systematic investigation of the accuracy and the performance of Modelica OS tools. The present implementation circumvents the limitations of OpenModelica making it possible to simulate the model system despite existing restrictions. Beside simulation tasks Modelica-based optimization is possible using the OS tool JModelica. However, care must be taken with respect to the model features. In particular instantaneous transitions within the system dynamics, such as phase transitions, switching of valves with discrete behaviour or flow reversal represent a severe obstacle for optimization. In this article, we present a parameter estimation problem including instantaneous changes of the flow direction. In addition, an example of model predictive control (MPC) for a control task difficult to solve with conventional methods is shown.

The ore handling systems represent one of the largest expenses in cave mining, while the productivity and cost of a given production system can significantly impact the value of mining projects and operations. Moreover, in recent years the increase in mineral production using mass mining methods has led to significant progress in extraction techniques as well as equipment and technologies. Simulations are used to mimic real situations of production systems to aid in the design of new concepts and make engineered decisions. Discrete event simulation (DES) techniques can be applied to a wide range of analyses in cave mining, from refinement of cost and feasibility of plans or schedules to understanding the system behaviour for better decisions before expenses. This paper discusses the foundations to build a simulation model, while presenting the development of a discrete event simulation code using the R-Simmer package for the R language, to estimate productivity and capacity of an underground mining production system. Models using open source tools are intended to be an alternative to commercial simulation software, which can be onerous and restricted to specific settings. The outcome of this work constitutes a novel contribution to the simulation field, with the benefit to help design and assess cave mining ore handling systems but also create the basis of a future fully open-source simulation tool for cave mining.

The use of Open source tools has been increasing over the years in various fields including the teaching and learning field. It is a better way of utilizing tools with a lower cost than the market tools that are available as well as the same tool can be customized to fit an institute (or a specialization). By integrating the collaborative methods and techniques with the open source tools that were customized, the students and teachers would be able to achieve collaborative teaching and learning more effectively as well as the teacher would have a better way of delivering the learning outcomes by the help of the tools. Moreover, the tools would assist in clearing the distractions that the students may have during the class by giving them a tasks through tools and keep them engaged and away from what can distract the students during a lecture. Furthermore, open source tools can provide a rather fun and unique experience for the students to interact with each other as well as with the teacher to meet the objectives of the modules as well as build a sense of teamwork between the students which can help the student not only achieve the learning outcomes but also assist in their careers after they finish with their studies. The open source tools will be divided into categories through which the teachers would be able to choose from depending on the learning outcomes of their lessons. A framework is suggested by the authors to use the open source tools in the most effective way.

Dendrochronological techniques are paramount in forest research. The current climate change scenario and the central role of forests in biogeophysical cycles enforce the importance of novel techniques to get accurate data from trees and their relationship with the environment in faster ways. Recent technological advances and the place of open source software and hardware are making free, user-developed tools for forest research available to the research community. The aim of this Ph.D. thesis is the development of tools for image acquisition and data collection in dendrochronology based on open source software and hardware. Thus, four different tools for dendrochronological research are presented in five different chapters. The first chapter focuses on the development of a do-it-yourself tool based on open source hardware for image acquisition and wood sample digitization at high resolution. We used open hardware equipment from Arduino and Python programming to develop CaptuRING and published the entire free open source tool as: "CaptuRING: A Do-It-Yourself tool for wood sample digitization" in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2022; 13:1185-1191. Furthermore, the original software was registered in the Registro General de Propiedad Intelectual (00/2022/737) of Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte (Spain). The second chapter presents "How to build and install your own CaptuRING". This contribution presents a series of videos with a step-by-step guide to promote the use of CaptuRING in the research community. The manuscript and related videos have been submitted for publication. The third chapter describes ρ-MtreeRing. This free and open-source software, which is written in R, analyzes X-ray films from dendrochronological samples to get microdensity values automatically segmented through a graphical user interface. The open source tool and manuscript are published as: "ρ-MtreeRing. A graphical user interface for X-ray microdensity analysis" in Forests. 2021; 12(10):1405. The fourth chapter describes the potential of deep learning methods to automatically segment xylem vessels. We trained three different convolutional neural networks to segment vessels in stained wood microsections using the Keras framework in Python. Our results demonstrate the potential of these techniques to automatically segment xylem vessels and overcome derived problems from image illumination, which hamper segmentation using classical image segmentation methods. The manuscript is published as "Convolutional neural networks for segmenting xylem vessels in stained cross-sectional images" in: Neural Computing & Applications, 2020; 32:17927-17939. The fifth chapter develops an algorithm to delineate annual ring limits in stained wood microsections of a species with diffuse porous wood using convolutional neural networks. We used Python for image processing and the Keras framework for the algorithm training. The results show the ability of this techniques to obtain accurate tree ring segmentation for quantitative wood anatomy, reaching similar or even outperforming conventional manual delimitation in most of the evaluated cases. The results of this chapter will be presented in the manuscript "Deep Learning for ring bordering in stained cross-sectional images". This PhD Thesis presents four open source tools to get accurate information from wood features to unveil how trees respond to the environment. From digitization at macroscopic perspective, automatic data collection and the development of feature segmentation on microscopic samples. The presented four novel dendrochronological tools based on open source software facilitates forest research in the current climate change scenario.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare open source and proprietary discovery tools and find out how much discovery tools have achieved towards becoming the next generation catalog.Design/methodology/approachThe paper summarizes characteristics of the next generation catalog into a check‐list of 12 features. This list was checked against each of seven open source and ten proprietary discovery tools to determine if those features were present or absent in those tools.FindingsDiscovery tools have many next generation catalog features, but only a few can be called real next generation catalogs. Federated searching and relevancy based on circulation statistics are the two areas that both open source and proprietary discovery tools are missing. Open source discovery tools seem to be bolder and more innovative than proprietary tools in embracing advanced features of the next generation catalog. Vendors of discovery tools may need to quicken their steps in catching up.Originality/valueIt is the first evaluation and comparison of open source and proprietary discovery tools on a large scale. It will provide information as to exactly where discovery tools stand in light of the much desired next generation catalog.

The aim of this article is to show the usefulness of Mac OS X based open source tools for forensic investigation of modern iPhones. It demonstrates how important data stored in the iPhone is investigated. Two different scenarios of investigations are presented that are well-suited for a forensics lab work in university. This work shows how to analyze an Apple iPhone using open source and freeware tools. Important data used in a forensics investigation, which are possibly stored on a mobile device are presented. Also the superstructure and functions of the iPhone are explained.

Securely erasing data is of key importance to anyone that is concerned with the security of their sensitive information, whether an individual or an organization. Simply deleting the data in question or formatting the storage device is not enough to ensure that the data cannot be recovered. Furthermore, with the uptake of Universal Serial Bus drives (USBs) flash memory based storage devices have replaced previous portable secondary storage media. Therefore, it is of a major concern whether these tools and products developed for securely erasing data secondary storage Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) would be as efficient when targeting the USB flash memory storage devices. With a wide range of open source and commercial products available on the market, all claiming, among other things, to be able to securely delete your data, it is quite a difficult task for the consumer to pick the most efficient product. This paper therefore discusses the results of experiments conducted with both the open source and commercial tools which claim to securely delete data off USB flash memory storage devices.

Development of efficient and cost-effective distributed hydrological modeling tool MWEasyDHM based on open-source MapWindow GIS

Imagine what would happen if you were stopped from accessing your own files or accessing your own computer system. Now imagine further if to get back the access someone demanded ransom amount from you. Globally increasingly social interactions and financial transactions involve few critical aspects such as digital data, computing device and the internet. This is an area where Ransomware has spread and become a major concern against digital extortion in the form of a new age threat vector to corporates and end users alike. This paper presents the various ways and methods adopted by cyber criminals against Ransomware and present an anti-malware detection system. Background/Objectives: The impact of Ransomware has caused immense damage to end users and corporates alike. Access to authorized data being blocked and being released only after the ransom demand has been mate, is a new age digital extortion has which holds promise as a viable option against the cyber-attacks on user systems, mobiles and handhelds. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The authors reviewed existing Crypto and Locker ransomware, studying their propagation, attack techniques and new emerging threat vectors as file Encryption Ransomware, Screen Lock Ransomware, Windows & Browser Lock, Pop Advertisements and URL Redirection. The authors also designed and tested cloud based malware detection system, performing comparison evaluation with and without the proposed anti-malware solution in form of sandboxes, so even if the environment got compromised, it could be easily decommissioned and rebuilt from a fresh clean virtual snapshots. The system comprised of three virtual environments running services for Malware Behavioral Analysis, Malware Code Analysis and Malware Reporting. Open source and commercial tools were used in each of the three environments. Malware Behavioral environment for analyzing malware for before and after receiving malware payload files and logs from infected user devices. Malware Code Analysis gathered assembly code and memory dumps from memory and performed analysis on malware payload instructions. The Reporting environment analyzed Web URL proactively for malicious sites hosting malware code or payloads and also checked the user system and devices for before and after analysis logs. Findings: When comparing to the standard antivirus scanners that rely on signatures, the proposed malware detection and alerting process has better malware mitigation results and advantages. The Anti-Malware scanning security apart from being a cloud service with the secure scanners operating from cloud platforms display a high level of resilience. Being a Cloud application has the standard cloud feature advantages of being elastic, scalable, pay-as-you-use, user driven cloud model. This model can also help in saving costs by promoting the BYOD concept. Application/Improvements: The Anti-Malware cloud model can be modified to offer specific payload blocking for different customers even as other customers of that very application program are able to access them and even benefit from experience of the infected customers. This model can be scale up dynamically as required.

The FPGA community is at an exciting juncture in the development of 3rd party CAD tools for FPGA design. Much has been learned in the past decade in the development and use of 3rd party tools such RapidSmith, Torc, and IceStorm. New independent open-source CAD tool projects are emerging which promise to provide alternatives to existing vendor tools. The recent release of the RapidWright tool suggests that Xilinx itself is interested in enabling the user community to develop new use cases and specialized tools for FPGA design. This paper provides a survey of the current landscape, discusses parts of what has been learned over the past decade in the author’s work with 3rd party CAD tool development, and provides some thoughts on the future.

Chapter 1 - Digital Forensics with Open Source Tools

Static detection of real-world buffer overflow induced by loop

Open-source tool Qflow is a toolchain that comprises of popular and efficient tool which is used to perform RTL to GDS-II flow for digital designs. Students and researchers can use this open-source tool for their projects and get an idea about the actual physical design flow. A commercial tool like Cadence Encounter requires a high-cost license for chip design. So, it is generally used by the industry for good efficiency and higher accuracy. Here, the RTL to GDS-II flow is performed for Synchronous FIFO. In Synchronous FIFO, both read and write operations are operated with a single clock. This study illustrates the RTL to GDS-II flow of Synchronous FIFO using the open-source tool Qflow and Cadence Encounter. The entire RTL to GDS-II flow for the synchronous FIFO is carried out for the 180nm technology. Both tools use different foundries for standard cells and PDKs. The design's performance is compared based on the highest operating frequency, area requirements, and power requirement. As a result, the number of cells required in the case of the Qflow tool is 1.5x greater than in the case of Cadence Encounter. The area requirement of the Qflow design is more than 2.6x that of Cadence Encounter.