The US National Academies of Science's Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy estimates that the Internet and voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications infrastructure generates 10% of US economic growth. As market forces move increasingly towards Internet and VoIP communications, there is proportional increase in Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks. Like Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, TDoS attacks seek to disrupt business and commerce by directing a flood of anomalous traffic towards key communication servers. In this work, we focus on a new class of anomalous traffic that exhibits a mimicry TDoS attack. Such an attack can be launched by crafting malformed messages with small changes from normal ones. We show that such malicious messages easily bypass Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and degrade the goodput of the server drastically by forcing it to parse the message looking for the needed token. Our approach is not to parse at all; instead, we use Multiple Classifier Systems (MCS) to exploit the strength of multiple learners to predict the true class of a message with high probability (98.50% ≤ p ≤ 99.12%). We proceed systematically by first formulating an optimization problem of picking the minimum number of classifiers such that their combination yields the optimal classification performance. Next, we analytically bound the maximum performance of such a system and empirically demonstrate that it is possible to attain close to the maximum theoretical performance across varied datasets. Finally, guided by our analysis we construct an MCS appliance that demonstrates superior classification accuracy with O(1) runtime complexity across varied datasets.

Although polyamorous relationships have received increasing attention from researchers over the past decade, little attention has been paid to differences in relationship configurations: some individuals arrange their relationships hierarchically, prioritizing a primary partner; other relationship structures are non-hierarchical with no relationships prioritized over others. Across two samples (N Study1 = 225; N Study2 = 360), we compared relationship satisfaction and attachment security between individuals in hierarchical and non-hierarchical configurations. Greater variability in attachment security was found between partners in hierarchical relationships than those in non-hierarchical relationships; no significant differences were found in variability in relationships satisfaction across these groups. Furthermore, individuals in hierarchical relationships reported lower overall relationship satisfaction and attachment security compared to individuals in non-hierarchical relationships. More specifically, although no significant differences were found between non-hierarchical and primary partners, participants reported lower relationship satisfaction and attachment security with secondary and tertiary partners compared to non-hierarchical and primary partners. Findings suggest that these differences may attenuate with time. Although previous research has found that differences (e.g., in investment) between partners exist in both non-hierarchical and hierarchical configurations, the current research suggests that differences that occur organically rather than in a predetermined manner may be related to greater similarities in attachment security across partners as well as greater overall levels of relationship satisfaction and attachment security for individuals in non-hierarchical configurations. More research is needed to determine whether the observed between-partner differences are consistent with the relationship goals of individuals in hierarchical relationships.

Previous comparisons of relationship quality between individuals in couple‐initiated and arranged marriage have yielded inconsistent findings. One factor which may help to explain this inconsistency is variability in the way in which arranged and couple‐initiated marriages are practiced. To test this, we recruited 116 Bangladeshi women engaged to be married or within the first 3 years of couple‐initiated and arranged marriages. We tested to see which of three models (type of marriage only, perceived influence over partner selection only, and a model that included both relationship type and influence over partner selection) best accounted for variance in self‐reported intimacy, passion, commitment as well as positive and negative relationship quality. Results suggest that influence over partner selection is a better predictor of these outcomes than marriage type, with marriage type offering little if any information beyond that provided by perceived influence. Regardless of marriage type, women with greater influence over their partner selection reported higher levels of intimacy, passion, commitment and positive marital quality. Negative marital quality was unrelated. Future research may benefit from reconceptualising the arranged/couple‐initiated marriage dichotomy as a continuum.

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