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There is nowadays a wide range of TCP/IP stack identification tools that allow to easily recognize the operating system of foreseen targets. The object of this article is to show that fingerprint concealment and spoofing are uniformly possible against different known fingerprinting tools. We present IpMorph, counter-recognition software implemented as a user-mode TCP/IP stack, ensuring session monitoring and on the fly packets re-writing. We detail its operation and use against tools like Nmap, Xprobe2, Ring2, SinFP and p0f, and we evaluate its efficiency thanks to a first technical implementation that already covers most of our objectives.

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Brood sorting, observed in leptothorax unifasciatus ant colonies, is a major example of social insects ability to solve problems at the collective level. Two processes characterize this phenomenon: a process of aggregation of all brood items in a single cluster, coupled with a process of segregation of items in concentric annuli, each containing items of different type, and ordered such a way that the smallest items are at the center, the largest at the periphery, and prepupae dispersed in-between. In spite of its influence on algorithmics and robotics methods, no formal explanation of the brood sorting phenomenon was ever given. We present a first mathematical model devoted to brood sorting. Our hypothesis about ants behaviour are consciously minimal: we assume that random rules their acts, not only when they walk but also when they choose a brood item that they pick up, or beside which they deposit the one they carry. The first part of our work deals with the process of aggregation in a single cluster. The main subject of our study is the time evolution of a mathematical function linked to the notion of cluster. We prove that, whatever the number of ants acting, this function tends to decrease until it reaches a threshold that we compute: this threshold matches with the formation of the single cluster. The second part of our work deals with segregation in concentric annuli. Coupling the concept of virtual size of a brood item to the previous conclusions leads to a realistic explanation of the concentric structure observed in ant colonies. Finally, we prove the existence of a feedback effect, so that our results suggest that brood sorting is a case of self-organization that does not involve swarm intelligence.

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