Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Harvard College

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Universidade Do Porto

Michael D Mitzenmacher

Jay Kumar Sundararajan

Muriel Medard

Devavrat D Shah

Joao Barros

Szymon Jakubczak

Matthew E Brand

Cormac E Herley

Joseph W Marks

Stuart Schechter

Neal B Lesh

Evdokia V Nikolova

A popularity determination module (PDM) is described which reduces the effectiveness of statistical guessing attacks. The PDM operates by receiving a password (or other secret information item) from a user. The PDM uses a model to determine whether the password is popular among a group of users. If so, the PDM may ask the user to select another password. In one implementation, the model corresponds to a probabilistic model, such a count-min sketch model. The probabilistic model provides an upper-bound assessment of a number of times that a password has been encountered. Further, the probabilistic model provides false positives (in which passwords are falsely assessed as popular) at a rate that exceeds a prescribed minimum rate. The false positives are leveraged to reduce the effectiveness of statistical guessing attacks by malicious entities.

Use of popularity information to reduce risk posed by guessing attacks

A method, apparatus and computer program product for providing network based flow control is presented. A linear combination of packets to transmit from a transmit queue is determined. The linear combination of packets is transmitted across a network using a sliding window protocol. An acknowledgement (ACK) is generated, wherein a packet is acknowledged when a receiving node receives the linear combination of packets and determines which packet of the linear combination of packets has been newly seen.

Method and apparatus providing network coding based flow control

A method finds an optimal path from a source to a destination. The possible paths from the source to the destination are represented as a stochastic graph of nodes connected by edges. Each edge has an independent probability distribution over a cost of the edge. A constraint for reaching the destination is defined. The graph is reduced to a relatively small set of deterministic minimum cost problems, which can be solved to determine an optimal path that maximizes a probability of reaching the destination within the constraint.

Method for finding optimal paths using a stochastic network model

Compressed Bloom filters that act as a message as well as a data structure provide smaller false positive rates, reduced bits broadcast and/or reduced computational overhead in distributed Web proxy servers and other distributed networks.

Distributed, compressed Bloom filter Web cache server

A method packs input rectangles into a target rectangle. The rectangles are permuted into one or more an ordered list according to dimensions of the rectangles, e.g., width, height, perimeter, and area. The rectangles are then marked as unaccepted. A next unaccepted rectangle is selected from the ordered list beginning with a first rectangle in the list. Accepting the next rectangle if it is the last unaccepted rectangles, and otherwise, accepting the next rectangle with a probability p, and marking the next rectangle as accepted, and repeating the steps until all rectangles have been accepted.

Method for packing rectangular strips

Growing community of inventors

Lexington, MA, United States of America

Michael D Mitzenmacher