arXiv subjects

Ernesto Damiani

Publications and source records attributed to Ernesto Damiani.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

HH4AI: A methodological Framework for AI Human Rights impact assessment under the EUAI ACT

This paper introduces the HH4AI Methodology, a structured approach to assessing the impact of AI systems on human rights, focusing on compliance with the EU AI Act and addressing technical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. The paper highlights AIs transformative nature, driven by autonomy, data, and goal-oriented design, and how the EU AI Act promotes transparency, accountability, and safety. A key challenge is defining and assessing "high-risk" AI systems across industries, complicated by the lack of universally accepted standards and AIs rapid evolution. To address these challenges, the paper explores the relevance of ISO/IEC and IEEE standards, focusing on risk management, data quality, bias mitigation, and governance. It proposes a Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment (FRIA) methodology, a gate-based framework designed to isolate and assess risks through phases including an AI system overview, a human rights checklist, an impact assessment, and a final output phase. A filtering mechanism tailors the assessment to the system's characteristics, targeting areas like accountability, AI literacy, data governance, and transparency. The paper illustrates the FRIA methodology through a fictional case study of an automated healthcare triage service. The structured approach enables systematic filtering, comprehensive risk assessment, and mitigation planning, effectively prioritizing critical risks and providing clear remediation strategies. This promotes better alignment with human rights principles and enhances regulatory compliance.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

Leonardo vindicated: Pythagorean trees for minimal reconstruction of the natural branching structures

Trees continue to fascinate with their natural beauty and as engineering masterpieces optimal with respect to several independent criteria. Pythagorean tree is a well-known fractal design that realistically mimics the natural tree branching structures. We study various types of Pythagorean-like fractal trees with different shapes of the base, branching angles and relaxed scales in an attempt to identify and explain which variants are the closest match to the branching structures commonly observed in the natural world. Pursuing simultaneously the realism and minimalism of the fractal tree model, we have developed a flexibly parameterised and fast algorithm to grow and visually examine deep Pythagorean-inspired fractal trees with the capability to orderly over- or underestimate the Leonardo da Vinci's tree branching rule as well as control various imbalances and branching angles. We tested the realism of the generated fractal tree images by means of the classification accuracy of detecting natural tree with the transfer-trained deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Having empirically established the parameters of the fractal trees that maximize the CNN's natural tree class classification accuracy we have translated them back to the scales and angles of branches and came to the interesting conclusions that support the da Vinci branching rule and golden ratio based scaling for both the shape of the branch and imbalance between the child branches, and claim the flexibly parameterized fractal trees can be used to generate artificial examples to train robust detectors of different species of trees.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2024

Continuous Management of Machine Learning-Based Application Behavior

Modern applications are increasingly driven by Machine Learning (ML) models whose non-deterministic behavior is affecting the entire application life cycle from design to operation. The pervasive adoption of ML is urgently calling for approaches that guarantee a stable non-functional behavior of ML-based applications over time and across model changes. To this aim, non-functional properties of ML models, such as privacy, confidentiality, fairness, and explainability, must be monitored, verified, and maintained. Existing approaches mostly focus on i) implementing solutions for classifier selection according to the functional behavior of ML models, ii) finding new algorithmic solutions, such as continuous re-training. In this paper, we propose a multi-model approach that aims to guarantee a stable non-functional behavior of ML-based applications. An architectural and methodological approach is provided to compare multiple ML models showing similar non-functional properties and select the model supporting stable non-functional behavior over time according to (dynamic and unpredictable) contextual changes. Our approach goes beyond the state of the art by providing a solution that continuously guarantees a stable non-functional behavior of ML-based applications, is ML algorithm-agnostic, and is driven by non-functional properties assessed on the ML models themselves. It consists of a two-step process working during application operation, where model assessment verifies non-functional properties of ML models trained and selected at development time, and model substitution guarantees continuous and stable support of non-functional properties. We experimentally evaluate our solution in a real-world scenario focusing on non-functional property fairness.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

A Visualized Malware Detection Framework with CNN and Conditional GAN

Malware visualization analysis incorporating with Machine Learning (ML) has been proven to be a promising solution for improving security defenses on different platforms. In this work, we propose an integrated framework for addressing common problems experienced by ML utilizers in developing malware detection systems. Namely, a pictorial presentation system with extensions is designed to preserve the identities of benign/malign samples by encoding each variable into binary digits and mapping them into black and white pixels. A conditional Generative Adversarial Network based model is adopted to produce synthetic images and mitigate issues of imbalance classes. Detection models architected by Convolutional Neural Networks are for validating performances while training on datasets with and without artifactual samples. Result demonstrates accuracy rates of 98.51% and 97.26% for these two training scenarios.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

A Quantization-based Technique for Privacy Preserving Distributed Learning

The massive deployment of Machine Learning (ML) models raises serious concerns about data protection. Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) offer a promising first step, but hard challenges persist in achieving confidentiality and differential privacy in distributed learning. In this paper, we describe a novel, regulation-compliant data protection technique for the distributed training of ML models, applicable throughout the ML life cycle regardless of the underlying ML architecture. Designed from the data owner's perspective, our method protects both training data and ML model parameters by employing a protocol based on a quantized multi-hash data representation Hash-Comb combined with randomization. The hyper-parameters of our scheme can be shared using standard Secure Multi-Party computation protocols. Our experimental results demonstrate the robustness and accuracy-preserving properties of our approach.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Reputation-Based Federated Learning Defense to Mitigate Threats in EEG Signal Classification

This paper presents a reputation-based threat mitigation framework that defends potential security threats in electroencephalogram (EEG) signal classification during model aggregation of Federated Learning. While EEG signal analysis has attracted attention because of the emergence of brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, it is difficult to create efficient learning models for EEG analysis because of the distributed nature of EEG data and related privacy and security concerns. To address these challenges, the proposed defending framework leverages the Federated Learning paradigm to preserve privacy by collaborative model training with localized data from dispersed sources and introduces a reputation-based mechanism to mitigate the influence of data poisoning attacks and identify compromised participants. To assess the efficiency of the proposed reputation-based federated learning defense framework, data poisoning attacks based on the risk level of training data derived by Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques are conducted on both publicly available EEG signal datasets and the self-established EEG signal dataset. Experimental results on the poisoned datasets show that the proposed defense methodology performs well in EEG signal classification while reducing the risks associated with security threats.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Rethinking Certification for Trustworthy Machine Learning-Based Applications

Machine Learning (ML) is increasingly used to implement advanced applications with non-deterministic behavior, which operate on the cloud-edge continuum. The pervasive adoption of ML is urgently calling for assurance solutions assessing applications non-functional properties (e.g., fairness, robustness, privacy) with the aim to improve their trustworthiness. Certification has been clearly identified by policymakers, regulators, and industrial stakeholders as the preferred assurance technique to address this pressing need. Unfortunately, existing certification schemes are not immediately applicable to non-deterministic applications built on ML models. This article analyzes the challenges and deficiencies of current certification schemes, discusses open research issues, and proposes a first certification scheme for ML-based applications.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2023

On the Robustness of Random Forest Against Untargeted Data Poisoning: An Ensemble-Based Approach

Machine learning is becoming ubiquitous. From finance to medicine, machine learning models are boosting decision-making processes and even outperforming humans in some tasks. This huge progress in terms of prediction quality does not however find a counterpart in the security of such models and corresponding predictions, where perturbations of fractions of the training set (poisoning) can seriously undermine the model accuracy. Research on poisoning attacks and defenses received increasing attention in the last decade, leading to several promising solutions aiming to increase the robustness of machine learning. Among them, ensemble-based defenses, where different models are trained on portions of the training set and their predictions are then aggregated, provide strong theoretical guarantees at the price of a linear overhead. Surprisingly, ensemble-based defenses, which do not pose any restrictions on the base model, have not been applied to increase the robustness of random forest models. The work in this paper aims to fill in this gap by designing and implementing a novel hash-based ensemble approach that protects random forest against untargeted, random poisoning attacks. An extensive experimental evaluation measures the performance of our approach against a variety of attacks, as well as its sustainability in terms of resource consumption and performance, and compares it with a traditional monolithic model based on random forest. A final discussion presents our main findings and compares our approach with existing poisoning defenses targeting random forests.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2023

Tailoring Machine Learning for Process Mining

Machine learning models are routinely integrated into process mining pipelines to carry out tasks like data transformation, noise reduction, anomaly detection, classification, and prediction. Often, the design of such models is based on some ad-hoc assumptions about the corresponding data distributions, which are not necessarily in accordance with the non-parametric distributions typically observed with process data. Moreover, the learning procedure they follow ignores the constraints concurrency imposes to process data. Data encoding is a key element to smooth the mismatch between these assumptions but its potential is poorly exploited. In this paper, we argue that a deeper insight into the issues raised by training machine learning models with process data is crucial to ground a sound integration of process mining and machine learning. Our analysis of such issues is aimed at laying the foundation for a methodology aimed at correctly aligning machine learning with process mining requirements and stimulating the research to elaborate in this direction.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2023

A Late Multi-Modal Fusion Model for Detecting Hybrid Spam E-mail

In recent years, spammers are now trying to obfuscate their intents by introducing hybrid spam e-mail combining both image and text parts, which is more challenging to detect in comparison to e-mails containing text or image only. The motivation behind this research is to design an effective approach filtering out hybrid spam e-mails to avoid situations where traditional text-based or image-baesd only filters fail to detect hybrid spam e-mails. To the best of our knowledge, a few studies have been conducted with the goal of detecting hybrid spam e-mails. Ordinarily, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is used to eliminate the image parts of spam by transforming images into text. However, the research questions are that although OCR scanning is a very successful technique in processing text-and-image hybrid spam, it is not an effective solution for dealing with huge quantities due to the CPU power required and the execution time it takes to scan e-mail files. And the OCR techniques are not always reliable in the transformation processes. To address such problems, we propose new late multi-modal fusion training frameworks for a text-and-image hybrid spam e-mail filtering system compared to the classical early fusion detection frameworks based on the OCR method. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Continuous Bag of Words were implemented to extract features from image and text parts of hybrid spam respectively, whereas generated features were fed to sigmoid layer and Machine Learning based classifiers including Random Forest (RF), Decision Tree (DT), Naive Bayes (NB) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) to determine the e-mail ham or spam.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions

The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed, including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture. Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions, and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users, scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

Explainable Label-flipping Attacks on Human Emotion Assessment System

This paper's main goal is to provide an attacker's point of view on data poisoning assaults that use label-flipping during the training phase of systems that use electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to evaluate human emotion. To attack different machine learning classifiers such as Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost) and Random Forest dedicated to the classification of 4 different human emotions using EEG signals, this paper proposes two scenarios of label-flipping methods. The results of the studies show that the proposed data poison attacksm based on label-flipping are successful regardless of the model, but different models show different degrees of resistance to the assaults. In addition, numerous Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques are used to explain the data poison attacks on EEG signal-based human emotion evaluation systems.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2023

Data Poisoning Attacks on EEG Signal-based Risk Assessment Systems

Industrial insider risk assessment using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals has consistently attracted a lot of research attention. However, EEG signal-based risk assessment systems, which could evaluate the emotional states of humans, have shown several vulnerabilities to data poison attacks. In this paper, from the attackers' perspective, data poison attacks involving label-flipping occurring in the training stages of different machine learning models intrude on the EEG signal-based risk assessment systems using these machine learning models. This paper aims to propose two categories of label-flipping methods to attack different machine learning classifiers including Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Random Forest, and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) dedicated to the classification of 4 different human emotions using EEG signals. This aims to degrade the performance of the aforementioned machine learning models concerning the classification task. The experimental results show that the proposed data poison attacks are model-agnostically effective whereas different models have different resilience to the data poison attacks.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Explainable Data Poison Attacks on Human Emotion Evaluation Systems based on EEG Signals

The major aim of this paper is to explain the data poisoning attacks using label-flipping during the training stage of the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal-based human emotion evaluation systems deploying Machine Learning models from the attackers' perspective. Human emotion evaluation using EEG signals has consistently attracted a lot of research attention. The identification of human emotional states based on EEG signals is effective to detect potential internal threats caused by insider individuals. Nevertheless, EEG signal-based human emotion evaluation systems have shown several vulnerabilities to data poison attacks. The findings of the experiments demonstrate that the suggested data poison assaults are model-independently successful, although various models exhibit varying levels of resilience to the attacks. In addition, the data poison attacks on the EEG signal-based human emotion evaluation systems are explained with several Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods, including Shapley Additive Explanation (SHAP) values, Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME), and Generated Decision Trees. And the codes of this paper are publicly available on GitHub.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2022

ModularFed: Leveraging Modularity in Federated Learning Frameworks

Numerous research recently proposed integrating Federated Learning (FL) to address the privacy concerns of using machine learning in privacy-sensitive firms. However, the standards of the available frameworks can no longer sustain the rapid advancement and hinder the integration of FL solutions, which can be prominent in advancing the field. In this paper, we propose ModularFed, a research-focused framework that addresses the complexity of FL implementations and the lack of adaptability and extendability in the available frameworks. We provide a comprehensive architecture that assists FL approaches through well-defined protocols to cover three dominant FL paradigms: adaptable workflow, datasets distribution, and third-party application support. Within this architecture, protocols are blueprints that strictly define the framework's components' design, contribute to its flexibility, and strengthen its infrastructure. Further, our protocols aim to enable modularity in FL, supporting third-party plug-and-play architecture and dynamic simulators coupled with major built-in data distributors in the field. Additionally, the framework support wrapping multiple approaches in a single environment to enable consistent replication of FL issues such as clients' deficiency, data distribution, and network latency, which entails a fair comparison of techniques outlying FL technologies. In our evaluation, we examine the applicability of our framework addressing three major FL domains, including statistical distribution and modular-based approaches for resource monitoring and client selection.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2022

Reward Shaping Using Convolutional Neural Network

In this paper, we propose Value Iteration Network for Reward Shaping (VIN-RS), a potential-based reward shaping mechanism using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The proposed VIN-RS embeds a CNN trained on computed labels using the message passing mechanism of the Hidden Markov Model. The CNN processes images or graphs of the environment to predict the shaping values. Recent work on reward shaping still has limitations towards training on a representation of the Markov Decision Process (MDP) and building an estimate of the transition matrix. The advantage of VIN-RS is to construct an effective potential function from an estimated MDP while automatically inferring the environment transition matrix. The proposed VIN-RS estimates the transition matrix through a self-learned convolution filter while extracting environment details from the input frames or sampled graphs. Due to (1) the previous success of using message passing for reward shaping; and (2) the CNN planning behavior, we use these messages to train the CNN of VIN-RS. Experiments are performed on tabular games, Atari 2600 and MuJoCo, for discrete and continuous action space. Our results illustrate promising improvements in the learning speed and maximum cumulative reward compared to the state-of-the-art.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2022

Speaker Identification from emotional and noisy speech data using learned voice segregation and Speech VGG

Speech signals are subjected to more acoustic interference and emotional factors than other signals. Noisy emotion-riddled speech data is a challenge for real-time speech processing applications. It is essential to find an effective way to segregate the dominant signal from other external influences. An ideal system should have the capacity to accurately recognize required auditory events from a complex scene taken in an unfavorable situation. This paper proposes a novel approach to speaker identification in unfavorable conditions such as emotion and interference using a pre-trained Deep Neural Network mask and speech VGG. The proposed model obtained superior performance over the recent literature in English and Arabic emotional speech data and reported an average speaker identification rate of 85.2\%, 87.0\%, and 86.6\% using the Ryerson audio-visual dataset (RAVDESS), speech under simulated and actual stress (SUSAS) dataset and Emirati-accented Speech dataset (ESD) respectively.

eess.AS↗

arXiv2022

New data poison attacks on machine learning classifiers for mobile exfiltration

Most recent studies have shown several vulnerabilities to attacks with the potential to jeopardize the integrity of the model, opening in a few recent years a new window of opportunity in terms of cyber-security. The main interest of this paper is directed towards data poisoning attacks involving label-flipping, this kind of attacks occur during the training phase, being the aim of the attacker to compromise the integrity of the targeted machine learning model by drastically reducing the overall accuracy of the model and/or achieving the missclassification of determined samples. This paper is conducted with intention of proposing two new kinds of data poisoning attacks based on label-flipping, the targeted of the attack is represented by a variety of machine learning classifiers dedicated for malware detection using mobile exfiltration data. With that, the proposed attacks are proven to be model-agnostic, having successfully corrupted a wide variety of machine learning models; Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest and KNN are some examples. The first attack is performs label-flipping actions randomly while the second attacks performs label flipping only one of the 2 classes in particular. The effects of each attack are analyzed in further detail with special emphasis on the accuracy drop and the misclassification rate. Finally, this paper pursuits further research direction by suggesting the development of a defense technique that could promise a feasible detection and/or mitigation mechanisms; such technique should be capable of conferring a certain level of robustness to a target model against potential attackers.

cs.CR↗