Digital Commons Network^™

Continuous Risk Assessment For Large-Scale Cyber Systems, Adeel A. Malik

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cyberspace, with its multiple forms of device integration, is rapidly evolving and introducing loopholes within the cyber infrastructure, which creates opportunities for attackers. Despite the presence of network security devices such as firewalls, anti-virus, intrusion detection, and prevention systems, network intrusions still occur due to vulnerabilities within organizational assets or socially engineered cyber attacks. The lack of information about threats, vulnerabilities, and threat actors often leaves cyber defenders on a wild goose chase, making it critical to evaluate network security to mitigate adversarial threats periodically.

Various risk assessment frameworks, third-party tools, and online databases containing comprehensive threat information have been …

Interdisciplinary Approach To Understanding Stakeholder Reasoning And Decision-Making For Water, Katalina Salas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

On a global scale, humanity is compelled to address complex or â??wickedâ?? resource-related issues in the face of accelerating environmental change. In our work, we use the term wicked problem to refer to an issue that has multiple potential solutions and involves various stakeholders. The paths to reach resource sustainability under environmental uncertainty are difficult to identify, plausible outcomes remain uncertain, and tradeoffs required by any path chosen are challenging to understand. Environmental sustainability issues may involve perspectives from multiple stakeholders (i.e., scientists, policymakers, community members, and industry), often leading to conflicting interests and cultural misalignments that trigger the need …

Detecting Complex Cyber Attacks Using Decoys With Online Reinforcement Learning, Marcus Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Most vulnerabilities discovered in cybersecurity can be associated with their own singular piece of software. I investigate complex vulnerabilities, which may require multiple software to be present. These complex vulnerabilities represent 16.6% of all documented vulnerabilities and are more dangerous on average than their simple vulnerability counterparts. In addition to this, because they often require multiple pieces of software to be present, they are harder to identify overall as specific combinations are needed for the vulnerability to appear.

I consider the motivating scenario where an attacker is repeatedly deploying exploits that use complex vulnerabilities into an Airport Wi-Fi. The network …

Modeling And Predicting Emerging Threats Using Disparate Data, Ismael Villanueva Miranda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Early detection is crucial to mitigate the impact of emerging threats. This work proposes four innovative frameworks that build machine learning and deterministic epidemiological models using multiple domain-specific datasets to detect the onset of emerging threats in two domains: infectious diseases and cybersecurity. Our models are designed to detect infectious disease outbreaks, model their spread, detect malware activity, and analyze the relationship between software/hardware weaknesses and attack techniques.

First, we present a novel framework to detect multiple infectious disease outbreaks by integrating standardized disease-specific domain knowledge and public search trend data. Our framework showed high performance in identifying infectious disease …

Enhancing Basic Geology Skills With Artificial Intelligence: An Exploration Of Automated Reasoning In Field Geology, Perry Ivan Quinto Houser

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the use of Artificial Intelligence, specifically semantics, ontologies, and reasoner techniques, to improve field geology mapping. The thesis focuses on two use cases: 1) identifying a geologic formation based on observed characteristics; and 2) predicting the geologic formation that might be expected next based upon known stratigraphic sequence. The results show that the ontology was able to correctly identify the geologic formation for the majority of rock descriptions, with higher search results for descriptions that provided more detail. Similarly, the units expected next were correctly given and if incorrect, would provide a flag to the field geologist …

Online/Incremental Learning To Mitigate Concept Drift In Network Traffic Classification, Alberto R. De La Rosa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Communication networks play a large role in our everyday lives. COVID19 pandemic in 2020 highlighted their importance as most jobs had to be moved to remote work environments. It is possible that the spread of the virus, the death toll, and the economic consequences would have been much worse without communication networks. To remove sole dependence on one equipment vendor, networks are heterogeneous by design. Due to this, as well as their increasing size, network management has become overwhelming for network managers. For this reason, automating network management will have a significant positive impact. Machine learning and software defined networking …

Analyzing And Quantifying The Impact Of Software Diversification On Return-Oriented Programming (Rop) Based Exploits, David Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the implementation of modern software mitigation techniques such: as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), stack canaries, and the No-Execute bit (N.X.), attackers can no longer achieve arbitrary code execution simply by injecting shellcode into a vulnerable buffer and redirecting execution to this vulnerable buffer. Instead, attackers have pivoted to Return Oriented Programming (ROP) to achieve the same arbitrary code execution. Using this attack method, attackers string together ROP gadgets, assembly code snippets found in the target binary, to form what are known as ROP Chains. Using these ROP Chains, attackers can achieve the same malicious behavior as previous code …

Radio Frequency Fingerprinting And Its Application To Scada Environments, Evan White

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the introduction of IoT into ICS and smartgrid environments there has been a mod-ernization of communication protocols through the internet. This has led to the use of features such as TCP/IP but with it comes modernized attack vectors against these sys- tems. These attacks can be Man In the Middle (MITM), rogue device communication and device cloning. To prevent these attacks, this thesis deploys Radio Frequency Fingerprint- ing (RFF) techniques to verify the uniqueness and legitimacy of known devices. It is crucial to employ security measures within ICS that do not add to the network complexity as this effects …

Decision Making Under Uncertainty With A Special Emphasis On Geosciences And Education, Laxman Bokati

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In many practical situations, we need to make a decision. In engineering, we need to decideon the best design of a system, and, for existing systems - on the best control strategy. In financial applications, we need to decide what is the best way to invest money. In geosciences, we need to decide whether we should explore a possible mineral deposit - or whether we should perform more experiments and measurements (and what exactly). In some cases, we can compute the exact consequences of each decision - e.g., if we are controlling a satellite. However, in many other cases, we …

Oil Particle Analysis Using Machine Learning And Holography Imaging, Daniel Cruz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Holographic cameras show potential as a sensor to monitor oil spills. Holographic cameras record the light interference from particles in a volume of space, producing an image called a hologram. Processing these holograms is known as hologram reconstruction. It produces a representation of particles located in three-dimensional space. These cameras can record precise shapes and sizes of particles in a volume of water. However, it is very time-consuming and resource-intensive to process the images. Most algorithms that perform particle analysis require the hologram reconstruction step. The well-documented hybrid method is one such algorithm. Machine learning is one possible technique that …

Continuous Field Sensor Authentication And Process Integrity Assurance Mechanisms In Critical National Infrastructures, Abel Osvaldo Gomez Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The growing modernization of traditional Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPSs) has increased the probability and effectiveness of cyber attacks by integrating modern communication technologies that expose security vulnerabilities like lack of access control policies to adversaries. The exponential growth of cyber attacks has caught the attention of stakeholders that have proposed cybersecurity initiatives to protect ICPSs. ICPSs are part of the Critical National Infrastructures (CNIs) supporting the society's sustainability and national security. The cybersecurity initiatives aiming to address cyber attacks proposed by stakeholders must continuously authenticate constrained devices. Operational thresholds and process integrity assurance must also be maintained. A centralized ICPS …

Game-Theoretic Deception Modeling For Distracting Network Adversarie, Mohammad Sujan Miah

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this day and age, adversaries in the cybersecurity space have become alarmingly capable of identifying network vulnerabilities and work out various targets to attack where deception is becoming an increasingly crucial technique for the defenders to delay these attacks. For securing computer networks, the defenders use various deceptive decoy objects to detect, confuse, and distract attackers. By trapping the attackers, these decoys gather information, waste their time and resources, and potentially prevent future attacks. However, we have to consider that an attacker with the help of smart techniques may detect the decoys and avoid them. One of the well-known …

Digital Twin Technology Applications For Transportation Infrastructure - A Survey-Based Study, Hector Cruz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the past couple of decades, various industries have taken advantage of emerging advanced technologies, such as digital twin (DT), to find more effective solutions in their respective areas. In the transportation infrastructure sector, the concept and implementation of DT technologies are slowly gaining traction but lagging behind other major industries. To better understand the limitations, opportunities and challenges for the adoption of DT in this sector, a survey questionnaire was distributed to collect information from industry professionals involved in transportation infrastructure projects. The purpose of this study is to understand how DT technology is being perceived by the industry. …

Seismic Tomographic Modeling Of The Coast Mountains Batholith, British Columbia, Canada, Sarah M. Quinonez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Coast Mountains Batholith on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, comprises a series of granitic to tonalitic plutons. The felsic continental crust is generated from mafic oceanic crust subduction by partial melting and fractionation, leaving ultra-mafic roots. In July of 2009, a sizeable controlled-source experiment was conducted along a 400km east-west transect from Bella Bella into central British Columbia. Student volunteers from multiple universities deployed 1,800 one-component and 200 three-component geophones connected to Texan data recorders with 200-m spacing intervals and shot spacing at 30-km. The 18-point sources ranged from 160 to 1,000 kg of high yield explosives. …

Abstraction Techniques In Security Games With Underlying Network Structure, Anjon Basak

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In a multi-agent system, multiple intelligent agents interact with each other in an environment to achieve their objectives. They can do this because they know which actions are available to them and which actions they prefer to take in a particular situation. The job of game theory is to analyze the interactions of the intelligent agents by different solution techniques and provide analysis such as predicting outcomes or recommending courses of action to specific players. To do so game theory works with a model of real-world scenarios which helps us to make a better decision in our already complex daily …

A Bottom-Up Modeling Methodology Using Knowledge Graphs For Composite Metric Development Applied To Traffic Crashes In The State Of Texas, Daniel Michael Mejia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Data is a key factor for understanding real-world phenomena. Data can be discovered and integrated from multiple sources and has the potential to be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Traffic crashes, for example, are common events that occur in cities and provide a significant amount of data that has potential to be analyzed and disseminated in a way that can improve mobility of people, and ultimately improve the quality of life. Improving the quality of life of city residents through the use of data and technology is at the core of Smart Cities solutions. Measuring the improvement that Smart …

Decision Making Under Uncertainty With Applications To Geosciences And Finance, Laxman Bokati

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In many practical situations, we need to make a decision. In engineering, we need to decide on the best design of a system, and, for existing systems â?? on the best control strategy. In financial applications, we need to decide what is the best way to invest money. In geosciences, we need to decide whether we should explore a possible mineral deposit â?? or whether we should perform more experiments and measurements (and what exactly). In some cases, we can compute the exact consequences of each decision - e.g., if we are controlling a satellite. However, in many other cases, …

Advancing High Spatial And Spectral Resolution Remote Sensing For Observing Plant Community Response To Environmental Variability And Change In The Alaskan Arctic, Sergio Armando Vargas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Arctic is being impacted by climate change more than any other region on Earth. Impacts to terrestrial ecosystems have the potential to manifest through feedbacks with other components of the Earth System. Of particular concern is the potential for the massive store of soil organic carbon to be released from arctic permafrost to the atmosphere where it could exacerbate greenhouse warming and impact global climate and biogeochemical cycles. Even though substantial gains to our understanding of the changing Arctic have been made, especially over the past decade, linking research results from plot to regional scales remains a challenge due …

Integration Of Heterogeneous Traffic Data To Address Mobility Challenges In The City Of El Paso, Daniel Michael Mejia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Transportation performance measures are defined as quantitative and qualitative indicators that rely on data or information to explain mobility, traffic congestion, safety, environmental sustainability and other factors. Although performance measures have been used for freeways and other highways, not many have been specified and applied to the freight transportation system. Under the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act), state transportation agencies and metropolitan planning organizations in the United States are implementing freight performance measurement systems for performance assessment. This research aims to expand the existing limited freight performance measures and organize them into a comprehensive framework that can be …

Describing Data And Workflow Provenance Using Design Patterns And Controlled Vocabularies, Smriti Rajkarnikar Tamrakar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In any scientific experiment, researchers are required to access, compute, and analyze data to produce useful information to the scientific community. In order to instill trust on such scientific research products, the product users need to understand the procedure applied and the assumptions incorporated. The reuse and replication of reliable scientific data need methods that help the users to understand data origin and the derivation process, i.e. provenance. Although several standards for representing provenance such as PROV model (a W3C recommendation) have been recommended, they have not been widely utilized by scientific communities due to difficulty in aligning such recommended …

Spatiotemporal Variability Of Plant Phenology In Drylands: A Case Study From The Northern Chihuahuan Desert, Naomi Robin Luna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With global change, which includes climate change, there is a sense of urgency to understand how shifts in climate will affect ecosystems. Although several studies have improved understanding of how and why some ecosystems respond, most studies have not explored simultaneous responses of different land cover types throughout a given region. Dryland ecosystems, such as the Chihuahuan Desert, appear to respond to climate variability and currently make up about 40% of global land surface area. It is expected that drylands will expand to cover 60% of land surface area on earth by mid-century making this ecosystem more critical to global …

Reliable And Secure Scada Framework For Residential Microgrid Communications, Goutham Krishna Chalamasetty

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cyber security is one of the major needs for electric power industry like many other industries and organizations. The advancements in technology provide numerous benefits to power industry as well as benefits cyber attackers to perform different cyber-attacks on the industry. Power system is a complex physical entity that deals with power generation, distribution, and transmission. In general, no individual or company or an organization can bear a one hour power cut, which shows the need for reliability in electric power industry.

In order to develop a reliable and secure Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) communication network, this Thesis …

Structural And Stratigraphic Development Of A Salt Diapir Shoulder, Gypsum Valley, Colorado, Joshua Coleman Mcfarland

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A salt shoulder is a low-angle segment of the salt-sediment interface where the margin of a passive diapir steps abruptly inboard. The Late Triassic Chinle Formation overlies caprock on the northeastern margin of Gypsum Valley (GV) at the salt-sediment interface in the natural amphitheater of Bridge Canyon. Modern erosion of the Dolores River has created 3D outcrop of the salt shoulder, expressed by a 500 meter wide, sub-horizontal platform that dips abruptly into the subsurface to the northeast toward the Dry Creek minibasin. Within Bridge Canyon, seven facies associations have been recognized and interpreted within the Chinle Formation: 1) non-caprock …

Design And Evaluation Of The Impact Of A Multi-Agent Control System (Framework) Applied To A Social Setting, Perez Antonio Perez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The objective of this research is to design and analyze the performance of a new mechanism to improve the advising of students in a nontraditional environment. This nontraditional environment includes: a minority serving, commuter campus with a high percentage of transfer students. Specifically, these demographics are unable to keep a tightly controlled cohort of students flowing through to the completion of the curriculum. Students in these circumstances usually have varied course loads and competing priorities due to family and financial needs or other societal responsibilities. Therefore, there is a need for an individualized approach to advising.

University administrations face challenges …

3-D Structure Of Colombia From 1-D Constrained Joint Inversion Of Receiver Functions And Surface Wave Dispersion, Nick Talavera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The country, Colombia, resides at the northwest corner of the South America with seismicity and volcanism due to the intersections of the Nazca, South America and Caribbean tectonic plates (Figure 1). The boundaries of the South America plate, on which Colombia lies, borders between 60 to 200 kilometers from its coasts. A dense spot of seismicity known as the Bucaramanga Nest has had many theories to explain its existence. Two tectonic microplates suspected in this region have not been well understood. With many mysteries of the behavior of the tectonic plates beneath Colombia, using new methods may shed light on …

A Unified Cyber-Enhanced Approach For Detecting Cross-Site Scripting Attacks On Web Applications, Bhanukiran Gurijala

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cyber-security is one of our nation's most critical security priorities, and its importance continues to grow with the pervasiveness of computers and Web-based applications. In particular, cross-site scripting (XSS) is one of the most common and dangerous types of injection attacks that exploit input validation vulnerabilities. XSS has intensified due to: 1) lack of extensive security domain knowledge of software engineers who are involved in building and/or maintaining Web-applications; and 2) lack of proper software development processes focused on security, resulting in fixes to security vulnerabilities late in the software development lifecycle. Indeed, the cost benefits of removing defects, in …

Enterprise Systems, Information Security Management Systems And Their Impact On Enterprise Risk: A 3-Essay Dissertation, Fernando Parra Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This 3-essay study offers a comprehensive examination of hypothetical concepts related to the behaviors, attitudes, outcomes, processes, experiences, manifestations and indicators connected with an organizationâ??s design, implementation and management of a coherent set of policies, processes and systems to manage risks to its information assets. Network analysis tools are used to examine the relationships found in Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) literature published within the last decade. This study examines the effect of upgrades and implementations of enterprise systems on enterprise risk, as perceived by external investors. Finally, this study also assesses the impact of external IT governance certifications on …

Towards Analytical Techniques For Optimizing Knowledge Acquisition, Processing, Propagation, And Use In Cyberinfrastructure, Leonardo Octavio Lerma

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

For many decades, there has been a continuous progress in science and engineering applications.

A large part of this progress comes from the new knowledge that researchers acquire, propagate, and use. This new knowledge has revolutionized many aspects of our life, from driving to communications to shopping.

Somewhat surprisingly, there is one area of human activity which is the least impacted by the modern technological progress: the very processes of acquiring, processing, and propagating information. When we decide where to place sensors, which algorithm to use for processing the data – we rely mostly on our own intuition and on …

Development Of 3-D Shear Wave Models Using A Multi-Objective Optimization Scheme, Lennox Emmanuel Thompson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Evidence of geologic activity still occurring in Rio Grande Rift (RGR) includes quaternary faulting, seismicity, and widening at a small rate. We map the crustal thickness and seismic velocity ratio to create crustal model cross sections that highlights the regional extension of the Southern Rio Grande Rift (SRGR). Specifically, we compute receiver functions and receiver function stacks for 147 USArray and previously collected data, and interpolate the crustal and velocity results using a kriging interpolation scheme. By incorporating gravity, magnetics, receiver functions, velocity models, and the interpretation of seismic reflection/refraction data, we produce a constrained crustal model that characterizes the …

Constructing Negotiated Meaning And Knowledge For The Sol Y Agua Project's Role-Playing Adventure Game Focused On Sustainability Problems In The El Paso-Rio Grande Area, Claudia Chihiro Santiago

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Video games that address environmental sustainability issues could engage students. However, video games make simplifications and establish idealistic expectations that do not resemble real life sustainability challenges and settings. Game developers and scholars believe that depicting the complexity of the real world could help video games become effective educational tools. They call for additional procedures that incorporate information from actual settings and real life situations. Furthermore, scholars have argued that video games addressing sustainability issues can be improved or made more meaningful with the participation of youth from underrepresented populations, e.g., Latinos. The Sol y Agua project at The University …