Information and Communication Technology Assignment

COIT 20246 ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION
Due date: Thursday Week 11 (2PM AEST)
Part: Written Assessment
Weighting: 30% of total assessment.
Submission: Electronic (see course website for details)
Instructions
It will be necessary to use literature/online resources to complete this
assignment, please ensure you cite and reference any such materials using
the Harvard format.
DO NOT copy content directly from either the text or Internet resources: this
assignment is to be in your own words. You will lose marks if you do not
use your own words!
Please complete your assignment using this submission template file,
inserting your responses where indicated.
DO NOT delete the marking criteria page – changes are permitted to the
formatting of other pages including the headers and footers.
Please fill in the following details:
Student Name
Student Number
Tutor’s Name

Tasks
There are ten (10) tasks, one for each week: the tasks are detailed below. There is a
table to complete for each task. Please fill in the information required.
Note: Each resource summary should be around 200-300 words.
Week 1
The text discusses how modern CPUs function. Recently a critical flaw in microprocessor
design has been discovered that allows two extremely serious security exploits: Spectre and
Meltdown. Find and summarise ONE resource that describes how either of these exploits
work. The resource (and your summary) should focus on what is occurring in the CPU that
allows these exploits to occur.
Title and Reference:
Simakov, N.A., Innus, M.D., Jones, M.D., White, J.P., Gallo, S.M., DeLeon, R.L. and Furlani,
T.R., 2018. Effect of Meltdown and Spectre Patches on the Performance of HPC
Applications. arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.04329.
Summary:
There are two types of vulnerability known as Meltdown and Spectre, which all the computer
chips possesses since the last 20 years. Both the malware are incorporated with the
manufacturing of the chip. If the malware are used fully, then the attacker can get all the
previous accessed data that were protected completely. This flaw of manufacturing defect
was detected by the researchers very later on 2017 and came into public in 2018. There are
actually three different types of vulnerability with a particular CVE number for each type
(Simakov et al. 2018). Two malware are combined together as Spectre and the third one is
known as Meldown. There are many virus programs that are involved with these vulnerability
for gaining the access of data that should not be accessible to any other third parties. But
attacker uses two techniques to see the data that are present in the chip previously by using
two techniques known as caching and speculative execution. The Meltdown and the Spectre
gives way to dangerous attacks that can take place.
For example, the code of JavaScript on a particular website can use the malicious Spectre for
tricking a web browser in revealing the password and user information stored in. The
attackers can also exploit with the Meltdown malware in viewing the data that are owned by
some other users and even can view data of some other virtual server that is hosted on same
hardware. This can be very dangerous for hosts of cloud computing.
Week 2
Prior to 1985, there were very few Operating Systems (OSes) that used Graphical User
Interfaces (GUIs). Find and summarise ONE resource that describes ONE of these GUI
operating systems. The OS must have been release prior to 1985 so cannot be Microsoft
Windows.
Title and Reference:
Alles, M.G., Kogan, A. and Vasarhelyi, M.A., 2018. Putting continuous auditing theory into
practice: Lessons from two pilot implementations. In Continuous Auditing: Theory and
Application (pp. 247-270). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Summary:
Pilot is basically a single-user, and a multitasking operating system that is originally designed
by Xerox PARC in the year 1977. The Pilot operating system was written with a programming
language known as Mesa Programming Language, with a total of 24,000 lines of coding. The
Pilot operating system was firstly designed for a single user system that has highly configured
networked environment of some other Pilot system. The Pilot operating system was mainly
designed for IPC (Inter-process communication) through the interface of Pilot stream (Alles,
Kogan and Vasarhelyi 2018). The Pilot is a combination of virtual memory and a file storage
in one subsystem and is mainly uses the architecture of manager or the kernel for managing
its resources and system. The designers of Pilot Operating system is a non-preemptive model
for multitasking. But, later it was converted to a preemptive system that are based on

monitors. This operating system uses a debugger, which can debug even a frozen snapshot
in the disk of the operating system.
A traditional Pilot workstation usually runs on three operating systems at a time with
three different disk volumes known as Co-Co-Pilot, Co-Pilot, and inferior copy of the Pilot that
basically runs on third disk volume. The debugger of the Pilot operating system was coded
only for reading and writing the variables for a program stored on separate disk volumes. The
architecture of Pilot that was designed was very unique because the developer was allowed
to use a single-step of operating system code along with semaphore locks. The Pilot
operating system was used for Xerox Star workstation.
Week 3
Low-Powered Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) are wireless communication networks that are
characterised by linking devices over large distances. Devices (including simple sensors)
typically can only communicate at very low bit rates, however, the communication and
associated electronics consume very little power. As such, LPWAN devices can be battery
powered and operate independently for many months or even years. Find and summarise
ONE resource that describes ONE platform or technology that implements a LPWAN.
Title and Reference:
Bardyn, J.P., Melly, T., Seller, O. and Sornin, N., 2016, September. IoT: The era of LPWAN is
starting now. In European Solid-State Circuits Conference, ESSCIRC Conference 2016:
42nd (pp. 25-30). IEEE.
Summary:
The LPWAN network is not only a single technology. LPWAN is a group of different types of
low-power technology, along with technologies of Wide Area Network that takes different
forms and shapes. The LPWAN technology basically uses a licensed as well as unlicensed
frequencies and then includes the proprietary or some open standard options. One type of
LPWAN is unlicensed Sigfox. This is one of the widely used LPWAN in the modern network
topologies. The Sigfox uses a public network of about 868 MHz or a network of 902 MHz
bands (Bardyn et al. 2016). This is technology of ultra-narrowband technology that allows
single operator for each country. The Sigfox is able to deliver messages of over 30 to 50 km
distance in rural areas and 3 to 10 km distance in urban areas. The Sigfox can also travel to a
distance of 1,000 km in application of line-of-site and the packet size is mostly limited to about
150 messages including 12 bytes per day. The packet of downlink are smaller that limits to
only four messages of about 8 bytes on each day. The sending back of the endpoints can be
prone to the interference.
The second type of technology in LPWAN is the RPMA (Random Phase Multiple Access).
This technology serves a shorter distance of maximum of about 50 km and offers a
bidirectional communication compared to Sigfox. This technology runs on a 2.4 GHz of
spectrum and is prone to the interference that is received from physical structures, Bluetooth,
and Wi-Fi. The RPMA has a high power consumption compared to other LPWAN networks.
Week 4
Voice over IP (VoIP) is a group of hardware and software technologies that allow users to
communicate via voice and video over the Internet. VoIP uses a number of different software
protocols, depending on the application. Find and summarise ONE resource that describes
ONE of these VoIP protocols.
Title and Reference:
De Pessemier, T., Stevens, I., De Marez, L., Martens, L. and Joseph, W., 2016. Quality
assessment and usage behavior of a mobile voice-over-IP service. Telecommunication
Systems, 61(3), pp.417-432.
Summary:
One of the protocol that is used in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the IETF standard of
protocol. The IETF standard protocol is used for establishing the connection of VoIP. The
IETF is basically a control protocol on application layer that is used for creating, terminating

as well as modifying the sessions with more than one participants. The architecture that is
involved in SIP is same as the HTTP protocol (Client-server protocol). Requests are mainly
generated by client and then are sent to that particular server (Pessemier et al. 2016). The
server then processes that request and sends back a response message to client. A request
messages that is generated in SIP for making a transaction is INVITE and the response
message is acknowledged by the ACK message. This helps to open a process of reliable
channel that can pass messages of call control over them. SIP makes very minimal
assumption for underlying the transport protocol.
SIP protocol provides reliability, and do not depend on the TCP for its reliability. The SIP
protocol depends on SDP (Session Description Protocol) that helps to carry out negotiation
for code identification. SIP mainly supports descriptions, which allows participants for
agreeing on a particular set of media types that are compatible. SIP also supports user
mobility by providing proxying and then redirecting the requests to the current location of the
user. The service provided by SIP provides includes: user location used for determining the
end system for communication, call setup that includes establishing and ringing the calling
parameters at both the ends. The SIP also provides user availability determining the
willingness of party who is called for engaging in the communication, user capabilities that
determines the media and the parameter of media that are used and call handling that helps
to transfer and terminate the calls.
Week 5
One of the many uses of cryptography has been the development of the blockchain.
Blockchains are commonly used as the basis for maintaining the data integrity of crypto
currencies, though have many, many more applications. Find and summarise ONE resource
that describes how blockchains work. Note that the resource should focus on the blockchain
mechanism, NOT crypto currencies.
Title and Reference:
Kosba, A., Miller, A., Shi, E., Wen, Z. and Papamanthou, C., 2016, May. Hawk: The
blockchain model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart contracts. In Security and
Privacy (SP), 2016 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 839-858). IEEE.
Summary:
There are mainly three technological principles that are combined for the creation of block
chain. The technologies that are involved are the private key cryptography, distributed
network along with shared ledger, and incentive that helps in serving the transaction of the
network security, and record keeping. All the technologies works together to provide a
secured digital relationship.
Cryptography key: In this technology, if two people wishes for a transaction over internet,
both the people should have a private key as well as a public key. The main goal of using this
cryptography key in blockchain technology is for creating an interference of secure digital
library. The identity is mainly based on the possession for combining both the public as well
as private cryptographic keys (Kosba et al. 2016). The combination of all these keys leads to
a dexterous consent that creates strong digital signatures.
Distributed Network: The advantage of using distributed network and the need of using this
in Block chain is to keep a witness that same thing happened at that particular time. The
Blockchain consists of a large network where the consensus and validators are to be kept as
witness. The security of the network is very much important in the block chain technology. For
this distributed network is used.
System of Record: When the cryptographic keys are attached with the network of block
chain, a form of digital interaction basically emerges. The process generally begins with a
person taking a private key and making some announcement related to the bitcoin and then
creates a cryptography summation and attach the private key created to the public key of the
B.
Week 6
One controversial practical application of network traffic management is in the contravention
of the principle of “net neutrality”. Find and summarise ONE resource that describes what net

neutrality is and how its contravention could impact on individual and business users of the
Internet.
Title and Reference:
Bourreau, M., Kourandi, F. and Valletti, T., 2015. Net neutrality with competing internet
platforms. The Journal of Industrial Economics, 63(1), pp.30-73.
Summary:
Net neutrality mainly affects all individual’s and every company’s access to a particular
resource. If the ISPs gives treatment to a particular content provider, there remains a
discrepancy in which a faster as well as slower service is provided by the ISPs of different
content providers. The most common factor included in net neutrality states about have high
speed of net with less amount of money.
The internet service providers generally have control over the connection speed for a
particular service. In a business, mostly it is evaluated that which ISP offers the fastest
network with lowest price. While choosing a service provider of internet, user has also to
evaluate about which ISP provides faster connection to a Google application and which
service provider gives a fast connection in video conferencing software. There are many
service providers who provides the service of internet and get highest speed of internet with
less amount of money is known as net neutrality. Net neutrality is basically a concept that
consists of content of internet and have the access so that it can be treated equally. All the
content providers that includes Wikipedia, Netflix gives equal access to the bandwidth by ISP
and the governments (Bourreau, Kourandi and Valletti 2015). There is another aspect of net
neutrality that includes ISP and the governments should not deliver censor content to the
users via internet. The bandwidth of net neutrality is considered to be the most important
aspect that blocks the content that is illegal and also might draw out censorship in the coming
years. The Internet Service Providers usually provides preferential bandwidths providing
fastest network to the users.

Week 7
Information Systems have led to greater and greater degrees of automation in the workplace.
There is currently extensive speculation on which jobs will cease to be performed by humans
in the near future. Find and summarise ONE resource that discusses jobs that are likely to
not exist in the future due to ICT based automation. Note that the resource must clearly link
the loss of the job(s) to advances in ICT.
Title and Reference:
Roll, L.C., Siu, O.L., Li, S.Y. and De Witte, H., 2015. Job insecurity: cross-cultural comparison
between Germany and China. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and
Performance, 2(1), pp.36-54.
Summary:
The jobs that are likely to not exist in future are as follows:
Cashier Job- The job of a cashier is most likely to be replaced by self-checkout machines.
The jobs of cashier is replaced by these modern machines that helps to do the job
automatically.
Delivery of newspapers- The delivery person of newspaper faces a job insecurity as most of
the people are switch the newspaper reading to their electronic device instead of newspaper.
Travel agents job- The job of travel agents are diminishing day by day as there are many
travel websites that enables the user to get ticket by themselves. So, the agents are losing
their jobs less amount of users fetches help from the travel agents.
Taxi Dispatchers- There are mobile applications such as Uber or Lyft that allows to cut the
cost of travelling. The taxi dispatchers works as a middle man that are basically replaced by
mobile applications.
Taxi Drivers- The job of a taxi driver is replaced by self-driving cars that do not need any
manual driver for driving. This is another problem that drivers are facing related to insecurity
of their jobs (Roll et al. 2015). So, taxi drivers are assumed to be redundant in the coming
time. The self-driving cars replaced by cheaper, and a labor free transport mode.
Journalist job- The job of a journalist is facing problem that are being replaced by artificial
intelligence. The advanced developments that are included in artificial intelligence that
creates quarterly reports for some interview.
Social Media Expert- The coming generation and the present generation integrates the social
media in to their life almost every day and every time. So, maintaining and managing social
media has become very important to the involvement of present generation of social media
expert is not such needed in the system.
Telemarketers- The job of telemarketers are replaced by automated robots are that speaks
out automatically without involvement of any person.
Week 8
With the advent of mass data collection and storage has come the use of these datasets for
machine learning. Find and summarise ONE resource that describes what machine learning
is and how it is being used.
Title and Reference:
Witten, I.H., Frank, E., Hall, M.A. and Pal, C.J., 2016. Data Mining: Practical machine learning
tools and techniques. Morgan Kaufmann.
Summary:
Machine learning is actually a method if analysis the data that analyzes automatic model
building. Machine learning is an artificial intelligence branch that is actually based on idea
about what the system can learn from the data, makes decisions, and identify patterns with
that of intervention of human. With the new computing technologies, the process of machine
learning is not the same as the machine learning that was used before (Witten et al. 2016).
Machine learning was firstly made form pattern recognition and are based of theory from
which the computers can learn some specific tasks without programmed.
The researchers who are interested in the artificial intelligence wants to see of the
computers can learn from the data. There is an iterative aspect of machine learning that is
considered as an important aspect. This is because the models are exposed to the new data
they can adapt independently. Resurging interest related in machine learning is because of

some factors, which have data mining as well as Bayesian analysis.
Week 9
Critical to application development are the languages used to implement the specifications.
Find and summarise ONE resource that describes ONE programming language that has
been developed since 2008. The resource (and your summary) should include information
on the principle uses and features of the language.
Title and Reference:
Howland, K. and Good, J., 2015. Learning to communicate computationally with Flip: A bi-
modal programming language for game creation. Computers & Education, 80, pp.224-240.
Summary:
The programming language that was established in 2011 was the Red computer
programming language. Rebol programming language was improved to overcome its
limitation and a new programming language was invented known as Red programming
language. Red programming language is an imperative as well as functional programming
language. The general usage and the syntax of Red language is much more similar to and is
interpreted from Rebol language (Howland and Good 2015). The implementation choices that
is involved in Red language intends in creating full stack programming language. Red
programming language can be used as a high level of programming and have low level of
programming. High level of programming includes DSL and GUI and low level of
programming including device drivers and operating system.

Week 10
While information systems and technology deliver many benefits to society, they can also
result in negative effects and outcomes. One recent controversy, the propagation of fake
news and its influence on elections, has been linked to a type of software called a “bot”. Find
and summarise ONE resource that describes what bots are and how they can be used for
disseminating misinformation and affecting human behaviour.
Title and Reference:
Ferrara, E., Varol, O., Davis, C., Menczer, F. and Flammini, A., 2016. The rise of social
bots. Communications of the ACM, 59(7), pp.96-104.
Summary:
Bots are most likely to be automated accounts, concept of social networking, as well as
algorithms, which performs a routine tasks that are called as chat social bots. The bots are
simple form of artificial intelligence. The bots that are used are known as social bots and
basically operates by hiding the original identity by making themselves as actual user of the
social media accounts. There are many threats that are involved with the digital system that is
used in the modern world.
The working of social bots are done in many ways. The social bots that are used now
a days are used in many different platforms. The platforms that are used by social bots
includes Facebook, IBM, as well as Google, which is a new trend of the social media that are
used now a days are used in many different platforms. The platforms that are used by social
bots includes Facebook, IBM, as well as Google, which is a new trend of the social media.
The social bots also helps to make the applications and websites that is superfluous and the
users get directly involved with the social bot (Ferrara et al. 2016). The users can be engaged
directly by with the help of bot and social bots also helps to be used in increasing the political
context. The influence of social bot are very high on the person today with the development of
technologies these days.

MARKING SHEET - DO NOT DELETE
Criteria
0 No Response
<=1 Poor resource selection; resource is too broad or lacks relevance to the
task; summary fails to explain what the resource was about; the relevance
and/or usefulness of the resource has not been explained.
<=2 Good resource selection; resource is relevant to the task; summary is
adequate but may require either more detail or is too long; the relevance
and/or usefulness of the resource has been explained to some extent, but
needs additional information.
<=3 Excellent resource selection; resource is highly relevant to the task (the
resource is probably highly specialised); summary is detailed yet concise;
the relevance and usefulness of the resource selection has been clearly
explained.
Key
Deductions
-3
-2
-1
Reference/URL provided does not link to resource (and resource cannot
be located or determined from details provided) OR
Reference/URL provided does not relate to the summary (i.e. summary is
not of resource content / contains content not contained in the resource)
Resource is generic AND/OR covers multiple technologies/examples
rather than focuses on a single technology/example
Resource not referenced correctly/not in Harvard format
Week Marks Awarded
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
TOTAL
Comments: