Muhammad Husnain - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Muhammad Husnain

Research Square (Research Square), Jan 6, 2021

Despite the surging development and utilization of IoT devices, the security of IoT devices is st... more Despite the surging development and utilization of IoT devices, the security of IoT devices is still in infancy. The security pitfalls of IoT devices have made it easy for hackers to take over IoT devices and use them for malicious activities like botnet attacks. With the rampant emergence of IoT devices, botnet attacks are surging. The botnet attacks are not only catastrophic for IoT device users but also for the rest of the world. Therefore, there is a crucial need to identify and mitigate the possible threats in IoT devices during the design phase. Threat modelling is a technique that is used to identify the threats in the earlier stages of the system design activity. In this paper, we propose a threat modelling approach to analyze and mitigate the botnet attacks in an IoT smart home use case. The proposed methodology identifies the development-level and applicationlevel threats in smart home use case using STRIDE and VAST threat modelling methods. Moreover, we reticulate the identified threats with botnet attacks. Finally, we propose the mitigation techniques for all identified threats including the botnet threats.

2022 International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS)

Tropical Animal Health and Production, 2021

Coxiella burnetii , an intracellular zoonotic bacterium, causes query (Q) fever in ruminants. Its... more Coxiella burnetii , an intracellular zoonotic bacterium, causes query (Q) fever in ruminants. Its role has never been elucidated in small ruminants from Pakistan. The current study is designed to (a) determine the prevalence of coxiellosis in small ruminants, (b) evaluate the association of various potential risk factors and biomarkers in the occurrence of Coxiella burnetii , (c) and determine phylogeny and genetic variability of its various isolates identified during the study. For this purpose, 320 blood samples from sheep ( n = 160) and goats ( n = 160) were collected from 9 Union Councils of district Kasur, Punjab, and processed for DNA extraction. C. burnetii was confirmed by amplification of IS1111 transposase gene with an amplicon size of 294 bp. The results showed that the overall positive percentage of C. burnetii is 36.87% (sheep: 46.9% and goats: 30%). The phylogenetic tree was also constructed which described the possible origin of this pathogen from environment. Besides, after translation into amino acid, the resultant alignment showed several unique changes at position numbers 18 and 27 in the isolates from goats and at 27 and 66 from those of sheep. These mutations can have major impact on the infectious characteristics of this pathogen. Furthermore, different potential risk factors and clinical biomarkers like age, tick infestation, abortion, mastitis, and infertility were also studied and found that these are significantly ( p < 0.05) associated with the occurrence of coxiellosis. It is concluded from the study that C. burnetii is endemic in small ruminants in Punjab, Pakistan. The outcomes of this study are alarming for scientific community as well as for policy makers because coxiellosis is an emerging threat to both humans and animals in this region due to its interspecies transmission ability.

Managerial Finance, 2022

PurposeThis article conducts a thorough review and synthesis of the empirical research on the ant... more PurposeThis article conducts a thorough review and synthesis of the empirical research on the antecedents of stock price crash risk to ascertain the macro-, meso- and micro-level determinants contributing to stock price crashes.Design/methodology/approachThe authors systematically reviewed 85 empirical papers published in ABS-ranked journals to assess the macro-, meso- and micro-level determinants causing stock price crashes.FindingsThe findings indicate that macroeconomic factors such as corporate governance, political and legal factors, socioeconomic indicators and religious beliefs have an effect on firm-level corporate behavior contributing to stock price crash risk. At a meso-level customer concentration, industry-level characteristics, media coverage, structural features of ownership and behavioral factors have a substantial effect on stock price crash risk. Finally, micro-level variables influencing stock market crash risk include CEO qualities and compensation, business poli...

2021 International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security (ICCWS), 2021

The rapidly prevailing Internet of Things (IoT) devices in numerous sectors, may jeopardize a vas... more The rapidly prevailing Internet of Things (IoT) devices in numerous sectors, may jeopardize a vast amount of confidential data, raising threats to network security. Thereby, it is crucial to verify the data source and device identity to ensure network security. Thus, the identification of IoT devices is a substantial step in securing the underlying network system. The models which are proposed in previous studies are trained and tested on the same dataset, which leads to overfitting. In this work, we propose a generic machine learning approach for IoT device identification and test the trained models on four publically available datasets. To better identify IoT devices in the network through machine learning models, we first extracted 85 features from packet capture (.pcap) files using NFStream. We then selected 20 features using the information gain method and trained six machine learning models in our experiments on two publicly available datasets, i.e., UNSW IoT Traces, and Your Things dataset, for binary classification. In the training phase, we obtained the highest 99% accuracy for IoT device identification using Random Forest and Naïve Bayes classifiers over UNSW and Your Things dataset respectively. Further, we evaluated these models on two other publicly available datasets. Overall, the Naïve Bayes classifier outperformed all other classifiers for detecting both IoT and non-IoT traffic, with 92% average accuracy.

Complexity, 2021

This study contributes to the literature by exploring the relationship between board financial ex... more This study contributes to the literature by exploring the relationship between board financial expertise and cash holding policy and further showing how this relation is moderated by multiple large shareholders (MLS). This research is based on agency theory, resource dependence, trade-off, and pecking order theory to confirm how resourceful directors screen cash holding practices. This study selects the 100 listed family firms from the emerging economy of Pakistan for the period of 2006–2017. With the use of static (random and fixed effect estimator) and dynamic (GMM) estimation techniques, this study reveals that the financial expertise of the board members has a significant negative impact on the firms’ cash holding level. Further, moderating effect of MLS between board financial expertise and cash holding is significantly positive due to weak corporate governance mechanisms in family firms. Moreover, the research has implications for developing corporate governance mechanism and ...

2020 IEEE 14th International Conference on Big Data Science and Engineering (BigDataSE), 2020

Sensors, 2022

The advancement in the domain of IoT accelerated the development of new communication technologie... more The advancement in the domain of IoT accelerated the development of new communication technologies such as the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. Although MQTT servers/brokers are considered the main component of all MQTT-based IoT applications, their openness makes them vulnerable to potential cyber-attacks such as DoS, DDoS, or buffer overflow. As a result of this, an efficient intrusion detection system for MQTT-based applications is still a missing piece of the IoT security context. Unfortunately, existing IDSs do not provide IoT communication protocol support such as MQTT or CoAP to validate crafted or malformed packets for protecting the protocol implementation vulnerabilities of IoT devices. In this paper, we have designed and developed an MQTT parsing engine that can be integrated with network-based IDS as an initial layer for extensive checking against IoT protocol vulnerabilities and improper usage through a rigorous validation of packet fields during the...

2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Industry (ICRAI), 2019

With the advent of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), the fake news epidemic is booming; whi... more With the advent of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), the fake news epidemic is booming; which not only encompasses pictures and videos but also audio. This is a big issue in an automatic speech verification (ASV) devices allowing anyone to steal an identity from a database of users. We aim to address this issue for a database of speaker utterances in the Urdu language by a two-fold solution. First, we will describe a Cyclic GAN based one-to-one conversion method that can generate speech from given speaker to a target voice bi-directionally. Cyclic GANs have much more strong mapping capabilities than ordinary GANs due to the property of Cyclic consistency loss. This framework ensures that given sufficient training data, generated output is very similar to the input. Furthermore, adversarial examples generated by the model are used for spoofed voice detection. We will use a Gradient Boosting method to learn to distinguish the voice utterances of various speakers that are stored in a database from the adversarial examples. For the testing of English language, we used the VCTK dataset and for the Urdu language, we used Urdu speech recordings containing a single word utterance from each speaker. This is tested for male → male, male → female, female → male and female → female voice conversions. The results obtained from learning from the adversarial examples are optimistic but more data and efforts are needed to make it usable into practical systems that can support speech verification at large scale.

ImmunoTargets and Therapy, 2021

The survival outcomes for multiple myeloma have improved several-fold in the past two decades, pr... more The survival outcomes for multiple myeloma have improved several-fold in the past two decades, primarily due to the introduction of therapies with novel mechanisms of action including immunomodulatory agents, proteasome inhibitors, stem cell transplant and monoclonal antibodies in the schema of therapy. Antibody-based therapies targeting the surface marker CD38, namely daratumumab and isatuximab, have emerged as being highly effective as single agents as well as in combination regimens for both newly diagnosed and relapsed settings. Herein, the authors summarize the most recent data with both the current and emerging CD38-directed therapies in multiple myeloma.

2020 IEEE 23rd International Multitopic Conference (INMIC), 2020

The network attacks are increasing both in frequency and intensity with the rapid growth of inter... more The network attacks are increasing both in frequency and intensity with the rapid growth of internet of things (IoT) devices. Recently, denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are reported as the most frequent attacks in IoT networks. The traditional security solutions like firewalls, intrusion detection systems, etc., are unable to detect the complex DoS and DDoS attacks since most of them filter the normal and attack traffic based upon the static predefined rules. However, these solutions can become reliable and effective when integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) based techniques. During the last few years, deep learning models especially convolutional neural networks achieved high significance due to their outstanding performance in the image processing field. The potential of these convolutional neural network (CNN) models can be used to efficiently detect the complex DoS and DDoS by converting the network traffic dataset into images. Therefore, in this work, we proposed a methodology to convert the network traffic data into image form and trained a stateof-the-art CNN model, i.e., ResNet over the converted data. The proposed methodology accomplished 99.99% accuracy for detecting the DoS and DDoS in case of binary classification. Furthermore, the proposed methodology achieved 87% average precision for recognizing eleven types of DoS and DDoS attack patterns which is 9% higher as compared to the state-of-the-art.

2020 IEEE 19th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), 2020

In this research we propose a framework that will strengthen the IoT devices security from dual p... more In this research we propose a framework that will strengthen the IoT devices security from dual perspectives; avoid devices to become attack target as well as a source of an attack. Unlike traditional devices, IoT devices are equipped with insufficient host-based defense system and a continuous internet connection. All time internet enabled devices with insufficient security allures the attackers to use such devices and carry out their attacks on rest of internet. When plethora of vulnerable devices become source of an attack, intensity of such attacks increases exponentially. Mirai was one of the first well-known attack that exploited large number of vulnerable IoT devices, that bring down a large part of Internet. To strengthen the IoT devices from dual security perspective, we propose a two step framework. Firstly, confine the communication boundary of IoT devices; IoT-Sphere. A sphere of IPs that are allowed to communicate with a device. Any communication that violates the sphere will be blocked at the gateway level. Secondly, only allowed communication will be evaluated for potential attacks and anomalies using advance detection engines. To show the effectiveness of our proposed framework, we perform couple of attacks on IoT devices; camera and google home and show the feasibility of IoT-Sphere.

European Urology, 2021

CONTEXT Identifying the most effective first-line treatment for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (... more CONTEXT Identifying the most effective first-line treatment for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) is challenging as rapidly evolving data quickly outdate the existing body of evidence, and current approaches to presenting the evidence in user-friendly formats are fraught with limitations. OBJECTIVE To maintain living evidence for contemporary first-line treatment for previously untreated mRCC. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION We have created a living, interactive systematic review (LISR) and network meta-analysis for first-line treatment of mRCC using data from randomized controlled trials comparing contemporary treatment options with single-agent tyrosine kinase inhibitors. We applied an advanced programming and artificial intelligence-assisted framework for evidence synthesis to create a living search strategy, facilitate screening and data extraction using a graphical user interface, automate the frequentist network meta-analysis, and display results in an interactive manner. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS As of October 22, 2020, the LISR includes data from 14 clinical trials. Baseline characteristics are summarized in an interactive table. The cabozantinib + nivolumab combination (CaboNivo) is ranked the highest for the overall response rate, progression-free survival, and overall survival, whereas ipilimumab + nivolumab (NivoIpi) is ranked the highest for achieving a complete response (CR). NivoIpi, and atezolizumab + bevacizumab (AteBev) were ranked highest (lowest toxicity) and CaboNivo ranked lowest for treatment-related adverse events (AEs). Network meta-analysis results are summarized as interactive tables and plots, GRADE summary-of-findings tables, and evidence maps. CONCLUSIONS This innovative living and interactive review provides the best current evidence on the comparative effectiveness of multiple treatment options for patients with untreated mRCC. Trial-level comparisons suggest that CaboNivo is likely to cause more AEs but is ranked best for all efficacy outcomes, except NivoIpi offers the best chance of CR. Pembrolizumab + axitinib and NivoIpi are acceptable alternatives, except NivoIpi may not be preferred for patients with favorable risk. Although network meta-analysis provides rankings with statistical adjustments, there are inherent biases in cross-trial comparisons with sparse direct evidence that does not replace randomized comparisons. PATIENT SUMMARY It is challenging to decide the best option among the several treatment combinations of immunotherapy and targeted treatments for newly diagnosed metastatic kidney cancer. We have created interactive evidence summaries of multiple treatment options that present the benefits and harms and evidence certainty for patient-important outcomes. This evidence is updated as soon as new studies are published.

Critical Reviews in Eukaryotic Gene Expression, 2020

Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 2020

We examine the influence of Economic Policy Uncertainty (E.P.U.) on dividend sustainabilitydivide... more We examine the influence of Economic Policy Uncertainty (E.P.U.) on dividend sustainabilitydividend termination and dividend initiation decision. Using a sample of 1,375 firms over the time span 2000-2015, our main result reveals that during high E.P.U. past dividend payers are more likely to terminate and past nonpayers are less likely to initiate dividends. However, firms that rely more on internal finance (I.F.), generate high return on invested capital (R.O.I.C.) and state-owned enterprises (S.O.E.s) are less exposed to E.P.U. Therefore, negative (positive) effect of E.P.U. on firms' dividend initiation (termination) decision is mitigated by considering firms' heterogeneous characteristics. Results also show that firms having high asset growth, maturity, profitability, cash holdings and high firm value are more likely to initiate and less likely to terminate dividend during period of high E.P.U. In addition, effects of E.P.U. on dividend sustainability is higher for firms functioning in high marketised areas relative to low marketised groups. These findings are robust under different robustness check. Finding confirms that transparent and stable implementation of economic policies can improve sustainability of firm's dividend policy.

Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, 2019

Background: Four large RCTs (ASSURE, S-TARC, PROTECT, ATLAS) tested adjuvant VEGF-TKI therapy in ... more Background: Four large RCTs (ASSURE, S-TARC, PROTECT, ATLAS) tested adjuvant VEGF-TKI therapy in high risk RCC. The results were variable for efficacy and there were concerns for increased toxicity and decline in quality of life (QoL). We performed an updated meta-analysis including results of ATLAS trial to asses a risk-benefit for adjuvant post-operative treatments in high risk RCC patients by assessing reported disease-free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS), and toxicity endpoints. Methods: Literature search was done using Medline, CENTRAL, and Embase. The DerSimonian and Laird random effects model was used to pool estimates for DFS, OS, and common side effects across the 4 trials. A subgroup analysis was performed for sunitinib alone because of its FDA approval. Heterogeneity was assessed with Cochrane Q statistic and was quantified with I2 test. Risk for bias was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration’s tool. Results: The 4 RCTs included 4,820 patients. Adjuvant therapy ...

Immunotherapy, Sep 1, 2017

Chimeric antigen receptor modified T cells targeting CD19 and CD20 have shown activity in Phase I... more Chimeric antigen receptor modified T cells targeting CD19 and CD20 have shown activity in Phase I, II trials of patients with hematological malignancies. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of all published clinical trials studying the role of efficacy as well as safety of CD-19 and CD-20 chimeric antigen receptor-T therapy for B-cell hematologic malignancies. A total of 16 studies with 195 patients were identified. The pooled analysis showed an overall response rate of 61% (118/195) with complete response of 42% (81/195) and partial response of 19% (37/195). Major adverse events were cytokine release syndrome 33%, neurotoxicity 33% and B-cell aplasia 54%. Collectively, the results indicate encouraging response in relapsed/refractory B lymphoma and leukemia, especially in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients.

JAAPA : official journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, 2017

This article describes a 71-year-old man with right knee pain, prerenal azotemia, hypercalcemia, ... more This article describes a 71-year-old man with right knee pain, prerenal azotemia, hypercalcemia, and a mass in the distal femur. Although testing, including bone marrow biopsy, initially ruled out myeloma, an open surgical biopsy eventually confirmed the diagnosis as lymphoma involving the bone with classic histologic findings of mature B-cell neoplasm of germinal cell origin.

Oncolytic Virotherapy, 2017

The treatment of metastatic melanoma has evolved from an era where interferon and chemotherapy we... more The treatment of metastatic melanoma has evolved from an era where interferon and chemotherapy were the mainstay of treatments to an era where immunotherapy has become the frontline. Ipilimumab (IgG1 CTLA-4 inhibitor), nivolumab (IgG4 PD-1 inhibitor), pembrolizumab (IgG4 PD-1 inhibitor) and nivolumab combined with ipilimumab have become first-line therapies in patients with metastatic melanoma. In addition, the high prevalence of BRAF mutations in melanoma has led to the discovery and approval of targeted molecules, such as vemurafenib (BRAF kinase inhibitor) and trametinib (MEK inhibitor), as they yielded improved responses and survival in malignant melanoma patients. This is certainly a burgeoning time in immunotherapy drug development, and the aforementioned efforts along with the recent US Food and Drug Administration approval of talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC), a recombinant oncolytic herpes virus, have paved the way to exploring the role of additional oncolytic viruses, such as the echovirus Rigvir, as new and innovative treatment modalities in patients with melanoma. Herein, we discuss the current standard of care treatment in melanoma with an emphasis on immunotherapy and oncolytic viruses in development.

$Research paper thumbnail of Refractory IgD Multiple Myeloma Treated with Daratumumab: A Case Report and Literature Review$

Case Reports in Oncological Medicine, 2016

Patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma have poor prognosis. A recent analysis of ... more Patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma have poor prognosis. A recent analysis of patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma who were refractory to both proteasome inhibitors and immunomodulatory drugs showed the median overall survival of 9 months only. Daratumumab is the first-in-class human monoclonal antibody against CD38 cells which was studied in phase I/II trials for treatment of these patients with relapsed refractory multiple myeloma. It showed an overall response rate of 36% and a median overall survival (OS) of 17 months in these patients. We report a case of 40-year-old man with immunoglobulin D (IgD) multiple myeloma whose disease was refractory to at least 5 different chemotherapy regimens including proteasome inhibitors and immunomodulatory drugs. The clinical studies assessing daratumumab did not include any patients with IgD myeloma which is a rare form of multiple myeloma and to our knowledge is the first study reporting use of daratumuma...