• Shouhuai Xu (UTSA PI)
• Weining Zhang (UTSA co-PI)
• Ravi Sandhu (GMU PI; now at UTSA)

Some Students Worked for This Project

• Jim Dowd, graduated with Master degree
• Patrick Sharkey, graduated with Master degree
• Hongwei Tian, PhD student
• Paul Parker, PhD student
  

Abstract

The advancement in computer technology produced large volumes of data, which motivated the investigation of database technology (especially database management systems) that has been proven successful in maintaining and utilizing the ever-increasing volumes of collected, generated or derived data. This collaborative project envisions the emergence of a new era in which it becomes important to share the knowledge derived from the large volumes of data in the process of problem solving, e.g., business decision-making. In order to facilitate such a task, this project explores technical methods that can help fulfill a system middleware called knowledge management systems -- analogous to the database management systems. In particular, this project focuses on addressing the security aspect of this envisioned middleware, which includes secure knowledge-extraction and secure knowledge-dissemination. Both security problems are addressed with sound security models and mechanisms. The security mechanisms include the following: (1) designing a variety of schemes, including cryptographic and non-cryptographic, to facilitate secure and practical knowledge-extraction; (2) developing methods for mitigation of the damage due to knowledge-breaching that is inevitable in the course of knowledge-dissemination; and (3) full exploration of the notion of (dynamic) policy-directed knowledge-dissemination and its cryptographic-based implementation.

This inter-institutional collaborative project will provide a team-oriented learning and research environment for graduate students, and research results will also be integrated into educational courses. The aim for this project is that the results developed in this project, i.e., the models and mechanisms for knowledge management and safe knowledge dissemination will be integrated into the implementation of knowledge management systems in the future.

A Partial List of Publications (online versions available from Prof. Xu's website; a full list is under preparation)

• K. Harrison and S. Xu. Protecting Cryptographic Keys from Memory Disclosure Attacks. DSN-DCCS'07.
• P. Sharkey, H. Tian, W. Zhang, and S. Xu. Privacy-Preserving Data Mining Through Knowledge Model Sharing. PinKDD'07.
• P. Sharkey. PRIVACY PRESERVING DISTRIBUTED DATA MINING THROUGH PUBLISHED KNOWLEDGE MODELS. Master Thesis, Department of Computer Science, UTSA. 2007.
  
• X. Li, P. Parker, and S. Xu. Towards an Analytic Model of Epidemic Spreading in Heterogeneous Systems. Qshine'07.
• S. Xu and R. Sandhu. A Scalable and Secure Cryptographic Service. IFIP DBSec'07.
• X. Li, P. Parker, and S. Xu. Towards Quantifying the (In)Security of Networked Systems. IEEE AINA'07.
• S. Xu. On the security of group communication schemes. Journal of Computer Security, Volume 15, Number 1, 2007, pp. 129 - 169.
• J. Dowd, S. Xu, and W. Zhang. Privacy-Preserving Decision Tree Mining Based on Random Substitutions. In the Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Information and Communication Security (ETRICS'06), LNCS 3995, pp 145-159.
• S. Xu and W. Zhang. Knowledge as a Service and Knowledge Breaching. In the Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Service Computing (IEEE SCC'05), IEEE Press, pp 87-94.S.
  
• Xu and W. Zhang. PBKM: A Secure Knowledge Management Framework. NSF/NSA/AFRL Workshop on Secure Knowledge Management'04.