To facilitate dynamic spectrum sharing, the FCC has designated certified SAS administrators to implement their own spectrum access systems (SASs) that manage the shared spectrum usage in the novel CBRS band. As a premise, different SAS servers must conduct periodic inter-SAS coordination to synchronize service states and avoid allocation conflicts. However, SAS servers may inevitably stop service for regular upgrades, crash down, or even perform maliciously that deviate from the normal routines, posing a fundamental operation security problem --- the system shall be robust against these faults to guarantee secure and efficient spectrum sharing service. Unfortunately, the incumbent inter-SAS coordination mechanism, CPAS, is prone to SAS failures and does not support real-time allocation. Recent proposals that rely on blockchain smart contracts or state machine replication mechanisms to realize fault-tolerant inter-SAS coordination require all SASs to follow a unified allocation algorithm. They however face performance bottlenecks and cannot accommodate the current fact that different SASs hold their own proprietary allocation algorithms.

The primary strengths of blockchain systems come from strong guarantees of immutability and reliability, and these systems can be extended with programmatic logic through Smart Contracts. Many such programmatic use cases would benefit from the use of external data. However, the method of bringing that data onto the blockchain needs to be trustworthy and secure. Otherwise, the benefits of blockchain, namely distributed trust, no single points of failure, and immutability, would be at risk. Blockchain oracles are proposed as a conceptual solution to this problem. A blockchain oracle acts as a trusted intermediary to external data. In this work we analyze existing proposals for Discernible event oracle mechanisms, which seek to address oracle queries with a broad knowledgeable answering population, to characterize problems related to the incentives imposed by external value that depends on oracle outcomes. In doing so, we focus on continued challenges to voting based oracles, including trust limitations and the need to match questions to knowledgeable answering parties. To address these difficulties, we propose an extension to existing oracle protocols to utilize reputation as a tool to measure value and as a tool to associate questions with context. By providing a method to track contextual knowledge, our proposal allows for context-based query matching and enables higher probability of correctness for a given population size as well as stronger participation incentives.

Blockchains benefit from guarantees of immutability and reliability due to their high redundancy and distributed nature. They show their value especially when operating between untrusted parties. Their functionality can be extended program-matically by smart contracts, but are limited by high costs of on-chain computation and only being able to truly trust data which is directly included on-chain. To attempt to bridge this limitation, blockchain oracles are introduced as a conceptual solution to act as a trusted source of information within the blockchain. The Oracle Problem emerges as we consider how one can introduce trusted information into a trust-free environment without compromising the validity of the blockchain. Many promising designs for oracle mechanisms have been proposed, but it is not readily apparent how one should assess the applicability of a given mechanism, nor the strengths and features between mechanisms. To be equipped to assess and categorize oracles, we must consider not just the possible answers, but the questions to which these oracles are trying to speak. Categorizing questions by their possible answering populations, we propose a framework for considering oracle questions and the context with which they are posed. We observe that there are limitations to what an oracle can hope to achieve, depending on the nature of the question, while noting the context in which a question exists can change what is viewed as true.

This article reports on preliminary findings and recommendations of a cross-discipline project to accelerate international business-to-business automated sharing of cyber-threat intelligence, particularly IP addresses. The article outlines the project and its objectives and the importance of determining whether IP addresses can be lawfully shared as cyber threat intelligence. The goal of the project is to enhance cyber-threat intelligence sharing throughout the cyber ecosystem. The findings and recommendations from this project enable businesses to navigate the international legal environment and develop their policy and procedures to enable timely, effective and legal sharing of cyber-threat information. The project is the first of its kind in the world. It is unique in both focus and scope. Unlike the cyber-threat information sharing reviews and initiatives being developed at country and regional levels, the focus of this project and this article is on business-to-business sharing. The scope of this project in terms of the 34 jurisdictions reviewed as to their data protection requirements is more comprehensive than any similar study to date. This article focuses on the sharing of IP addresses as cyber threat intelligence in the context of the new European Union (EU) data protection initiatives agreed in December 2015 and formally adopted by the European Council and Parliament in April 2016. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to EU member countries, a major focus of the international cyber threat sharing project. The research also reveals that EU data protection requirements, particularly the currently applicable law of the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC (1995 Directive) (the rules of which the GDPR will replace in practice in 2018), generally form the basis of current data protection requirements in countries outside Europe. It is expected that this influence will continue and that the GDPR will shape the development of data protection internationally. In this article, the authors examine whether static and dynamic IP addresses are “personal data” as defined in the GDPR and its predecessor the 1995 Directive that is currently the model for data protection in many jurisdictions outside Europe. The authors then consider whether sharing of that data by a business without the consent of the data subject, can be justified in the public interest so as to override individual rights under Articles 7 and 8(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which underpin EU data protection. The analysis shows that the sharing of cyber threat intelligence is in the public interest so as to override the rights of a data subject, as long as it is carried out in ways that are strictly necessary in order to achieve security objectives. The article concludes by summarizing the project findings to date, and how they inform international sharing of cyber-threat intelligence within the private sector.

We discuss a system for tracking a patient's response during a clinical trial or post-marketing survey that leverages social media and other Internet-based sharing technologies. The system has many modalities. This work-in-progress paper describes a modality where an informational item is posted to a social media platform, inducing patients to post trial-related responses. The system aggregates the patient's responses and other environmental information to obtain deeper knowledge related to the trial or post-marketing survey, sooner than would be possible using traditional methods.

We developed the Key Press Stimulus Package, a novel protocol for simple devices, like a plain telephone, to signal user input to applications. Consumer communications services use this protocol to offer services such as remote control of home devices and interactive telecommunication services. Unlike existing digit collecting and matching protocols, the Key Press Stimulus Package is particularly suited for working in environments where multiple, unrelated applications receive user input from a single, mono-modal user interface device. We compare KPML to a representative, digit-bydigit signaling protocol, DTMFAD. By reducing the number of protocol messages by only reporting complete digit string matches and by only sending strings to applications that are interested in the pattern, the Key Press Stimulus Package provides a substantial savings in network and compute resources.

We present a novel proactive routing algorithm (dynamic routing system, DRS) that consistently searches for failures via frequent ICMP (Internet control message protocol) echo requests. Our algorithm differs from its predecessors in that it is proactive instead of reactive by looking for failures before they affect message transmissions. When a failure is detected, an alternative route is identified and used. Based on our actual implementation, we developed an analytical model of the DRS to evaluate its potential use for large networks. Using this model, we computed for various network sizes the fault identification times given a percentage of network usage. Calculations are carried out for a typical 10 Mbs Ethernet.