Engineering Commons^™

Improving Ethics Surrounding Collegiate-Level Hacking Education: Recommended Implementation Plan & Affiliation With Peer-Led Initiatives, Shannon Morgan, Dr. Sanjay Goel

Military Cyber Affairs

Cybersecurity has become a pertinent concern, as novel technological innovations create opportunities for threat actors to exfiltrate sensitive data. To meet the demand for professionals in the workforce, universities have ramped up their academic offerings to provide a broad range of cyber-related programs (e.g., cybersecurity, informatics, information technology, digital forensics, computer science, & engineering). As the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of hackers evolve, the knowledge and skillset required to be an effective cybersecurity professional have escalated accordingly. Therefore, it is critical to train cyber students both technically and theoretically to actively combat cyber criminals and protect the confidentiality, integrity, …

Using Digital Twins To Protect Biomanufacturing From Cyberattacks, Brenden Fraser-Hevlin, Alec W. Schuler, B. Arda Gozen, Bernard J. Van Wie

Military Cyber Affairs

Understanding of the intersection of cyber vulnerabilities and bioprocess regulation is critical with the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning in manufacturing. We detail a case study in which we model cyberattacks on network-mediated signals from a novel bioreactor, where it is important to control medium feed rates to maintain cell proliferation. We use a digital twin counterpart reactor to compare glucose and oxygen sensor signals from the bioreactor to predictions from a kinetic growth model, allowing discernment of faulty sensors from hacked signals. Our results demonstrate a successful biomanufacturing cyberattack detection system based on fundamental process control principles.

Characterizing Advanced Persistent Threats Through The Lens Of Cyber Attack Flows, Logan Zeien, Caleb Chang, Ltc Ekzhin Ear, Dr. Shouhuai Xu

Military Cyber Affairs

Effective cyber defense must build upon a deep understanding of real-world cyberattacks to guide the design and deployment of appropriate defensive measures against current and future attacks. In this abridged paper (of which the full paper is available online), we present important concepts for understanding Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), our methodology to characterize APTs through the lens of attack flows, and a detailed case study of APT28 that demonstrates our method’s viability to draw useful insights. This paper makes three technical contributions. First, we propose a novel method of constructing attack flows to describe APTs. This abstraction allows technical audiences, …

Generative Machine Learning For Cyber Security, James Halvorsen, Dr. Assefaw Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

Automated approaches to cyber security based on machine learning will be necessary to combat the next generation of cyber-attacks. Current machine learning tools, however, are difficult to develop and deploy due to issues such as data availability and high false positive rates. Generative models can help solve data-related issues by creating high quality synthetic data for training and testing. Furthermore, some generative architectures are multipurpose, and when used for tasks such as intrusion detection, can outperform existing classifier models. This paper demonstrates how the future of cyber security stands to benefit from continued research on generative models.

Machine Learning Security For Tactical Operations, Dr. Denaria Fields, Shakiya A. Friend, Andrew Hermansen, Dr. Tugba Erpek, Dr. Yalin E. Sagduyu

Military Cyber Affairs

Deep learning finds rich applications in the tactical domain by learning from diverse data sources and performing difficult tasks to support mission-critical applications. However, deep learning models are susceptible to various attacks and exploits. In this paper, we first discuss application areas of deep learning in the tactical domain. Next, we present adversarial machine learning as an emerging attack vector and discuss the impact of adversarial attacks on the deep learning performance. Finally, we discuss potential defense methods that can be applied against these attacks.

Securing The Void: Assessing The Dynamic Threat Landscape Of Space, Brianna Bace, Dr. Unal Tatar

Military Cyber Affairs

Outer space is a strategic and multifaceted domain that is a crossroads for political, military, and economic interests. From a defense perspective, the U.S. military and intelligence community rely heavily on satellite networks to meet national security objectives and execute military operations and intelligence gathering. This paper examines the evolving threat landscape of the space sector, encompassing natural and man-made perils, emphasizing the rise of cyber threats and the complexity introduced by dual-use technology and commercialization. It also explores the implications for security and resilience, advocating for collaborative efforts among international organizations, governments, and industry to safeguard the space sector.

Commercial Enablers Of China’S Cyber-Intelligence And Information Operations, Ethan Mansour, Victor Mukora

Military Cyber Affairs

In a globally commercialized information environment, China uses evolving commercial enabler networks to position and project its goals. They do this through cyber, intelligence, and information operations. This paper breaks down the types of commercial enablers and how they are used operationally. It will also address the CCP's strategy to gather and influence foreign and domestic populations throughout cyberspace. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for mitigating the influence of PRC commercial enablers.

Security-Enhanced Serial Communications, John White, Alexander Beall, Joseph Maurio, Dane Fichter, Dr. Matthew Davis, Dr. Zachary Birnbaum

Military Cyber Affairs

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are widely used by critical infrastructure and are ubiquitous in numerous industries including telecommunications, petrochemical, and manufacturing. ICS are at a high risk of cyber attack given their internet accessibility, inherent lack of security, deployment timelines, and criticality. A unique challenge in ICS security is the prevalence of serial communication buses and other non-TCP/IP communications protocols. The communication protocols used within serial buses often lack authentication and integrity protections, leaving them vulnerable to spoofing and replay attacks. The bandwidth constraints and prevalence of legacy hardware in these systems prevent the use of modern message authentication and …

Enhancing The Battleverse: The People’S Liberation Army’S Digital Twin Strategy, Joshua Baughman

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Operationalizing Deterrence By Denial In The Cyber Domain, Gentry Lane

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

What Senior U.S. Leaders Say We Should Know About Cyber, Dr. Joseph H. Schafer

Military Cyber Affairs

On April 6, 2023, the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative hosted a panel discussion on the new National Cybersecurity Strategy. The panel featured four senior officials from the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), the Department of State (DoS), the Department of Justice (DoJ), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The author attended and asked each official to identify the most important elements that policymakers and strategists must understand about cyber. This article highlights historical and recent struggles to express cyber policy, the responses from these officials, and the author’s ongoing research to improve national security cyber policy.

Approach To Problem Solving And Use Of Intuition By Engineering Technology Students, Meher R. Taleyarkhan, Anne M. Lucietto, Natalie L. F. Hobson, Therese M. Azevedo

Journal of Global Education and Research

Engineering technology students often forgo a methodical approach of solving or answering questions on assignments or exams in favor of an intuition-based approach, emphasizing educated guessing (Broberg et al., 2008). Faculty observations have noted these student solutions often provide explanations, usually sans calculations, to support answers the students believe to be reasonable when in reality deviated from the correct answer. An extensive study was developed to assess several distinctions between student intuition and use of cognition in problem solving, as related to a generalized student population. The study was comprised of a survey and interview. The survey utilized two instruments, …

Defensive Industrial Policy: Cybersecurity Interventions To Reduce Intellectual Property Theft, Dr. Chad Dacus, Dr. Carl (Cj) Horn

Military Cyber Affairs

Through cyber-enabled industrial espionage, China has appropriated what Keith Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency, dubbed “the largest transfer of wealth in history.” Although China disavows intellectual property (IP) theft by its citizens and has set self-sustained research and development as an important goal, it is unrealistic to believe IP theft will slow down meaningfully without changing China’s decision calculus. China and the United States have twice agreed, in principle, to respect one another’s IP rights. However, these agreements have lacked any real enforcement mechanism, so the United States must do more to ensure its IP is …

Offensive Cyber Operations And Future Littoral Operating Concepts, Jd Work

Military Cyber Affairs

Introduction of new ground-launch cruise missile options to hold adversary naval targets at risk in order to support conventional deterrence objectives through sea control and sea denial missions is the centerpiece of proposed reorganization of Marine Littoral forces, as part of new “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations,” and “Littoral Operations in Contested Environments” concepts. Effective distributed sea control fires against pacing threat maritime formations requires defeat of integrated air defense systems. Offensive cyber operations capabilities may be considered as a means of altering the calculus of attrition in missile fires exchanges, but due to various sensitivities it has been difficult to …

Enter The Battleverse: China's Metaverse War, Josh Baughman

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

The Iwar Range + 21 Years: Cyber Defense Education In 2022, Joseph H. Schafer, Chris Morrell, Ray Blaine

Military Cyber Affairs

Twenty-one years ago, The IWAR Range paper published by CCSC described nascent information assurance (now cybersecurity[1]) education programs and the inspiration and details for constructing cyber ranges and facilitating cyber exercises. This paper updates the previously published work by highlighting the dramatic evolution of the cyber curricula, exercise networks and ranges, influences, and environments over the past twenty years.

[1] In 2014, DoD adopted “cybersecurity” instead of “information assurance.” [34:1]

Cross-Checking Automated Passenger Counts For Ridership Analysis, Simon Berrebi, Sanskruti Joshi, Kari Watkins

Journal of Public Transportation

Due to concerns about data quality, Automated Passenger Counting technology has rarely been used to analyze local ridership trends. This paper presents a novel framework to test the consistency and completeness of passenger count data in four cities. The data are aggregated at the system level and compared with the National Transit Database between 2012 and 2018. In all four agencies, passenger counts closely follow the fluctuations observed in the national transit database. There is, however, a slight drift in two of the four agencies. At the stop-level, missing and duplicate vehicle-trips are identified using schedule data from the General …

Understanding Students’ Global Interdependence In Science Instruction, Walter S. Smith

Journal of Global Education and Research

Multiple American educational organizations such as the National Education Association, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and the Council of Chief State School Officers have advocated for globalizing the K-12 curriculum. The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) in a position statement on international education and the Next Generation Science Standards have produced goals and standards for internationalizing the science curriculum by addressing topics such as climate change, environment, and disease that cross borders. In contrast to those pronouncements on the curriculum, this article views global science education through an instructional lens that focuses on a students’ global interdependence in science …

Driver Perceptions On Taxi-Sharing And Dynamic Pricing In Taxi Services: Evidence From Athens, Greece., Christina Milioti, Konstantinos Kepaptsoglou, Konstantinos Kouretas, Eleni Vlahogianni

Journal of Public Transportation

The taxi industry has changed dramatically during the last decade, as ride-sourcing applications, ride-sharing and alternative pricing schemes have emerged, either as complementing or competitive services and strategies. After some years of familiarity with such trends, it is interesting to explore where the taxi industry stands with respect to possible service innovations. This paper explores behavioral patterns of drivers, focusing on issues such as their preferred way of conducting business, and their views on introducing taxi-sharing and dynamic pricing. Data collected from a face-to-face questionnaire survey in Athens, Greece are exploited, and appropriate econometric models are developed for the purposes …

Using Fuzzy Clustering Of User Perception To Determine The Number Of Level-Of-Service Categories For Bus Rapid Transit, Yueying Huo, Jinhua Zhao, Xiaojuan Li, Chen Guo

Journal of Public Transportation

The concept of level of service (LOS) is meant to reflect user perception of the quality of service provided by a transportation facility or service. Although the LOS of bus rapid transit (BRT) has received considerable attention, the number of levels of service of BRT that a user can perceive still remains unclear. Therefore, in this paper, we address this issue using fuzzy clustering of user perception. User perception is defined as a six-dimension vector of the perceived arrival time, perceived waiting time, bus speed perception, passenger load perception, perceived departure time, and overall perception. A smartphone-based transit travel survey …

Understanding Transantiago Users’ Motivations For Paying Or Evading Payment Of Bus Fares, Carolina Busco, Felipe González, Yamil Jaqueih, Felipe Jiménez, Borja Alonso

Journal of Public Transportation

Transantiago, the public transport system implemented in Santiago, Chile, remains a controversial subject of public debate due to constantly increasing fare evasion rates throughout its decade-long existence. The

Transantiago, the public transport system implemented in Santiago, Chile, remains a controversial subject of public debate due to constantly increasing fare evasion rates throughout its decade-long existence. The research question under consideration in this paper is as follows: What motivates individuals to evade or pay bus fares? To answer this question, we developed a multidisciplinary study that combined relevant engineering expertise with a sociological perspective and combined quantitative analyses with qualitative methodologies …

Vermiculations In Painted Caves: New Inputs From Laboratory Experiments And Field Observations, Perrine Freydier, Eric Weber, Jérôme Martin, Pierre-Yves Jeannin, Béatrice Guerrier, Frédéric Doumenc

International Journal of Speleology

Vermiculations are aggregates of small particles commonly found on cave walls. They are a major concern for the conservation of painted caves, as they can potentially alter valuable prehistoric cave paintings. A previous rheological study of fine sediment deposits on cave walls revealed that this material can undergo a solid-to-liquid transition triggered by variations in the chemical composition of the water film on the wall. Such a transition could occur at the origin of vermiculations by allowing the sediment to flow under low mechanical stress. In this work, we provide quantitative information on the conditions leading to this transition and …

People-Focused And Near-Term Public Transit Performance Analysis, Alex Karner

Journal of Public Transportation

Public transit ridership forecasts have long played a role in understanding the potential success of a policy or investment, but their limitations have led researchers and practitioners to identify other performance analysis approaches. Accessibility, or the ease of reaching opportunities, has become very popular and widely used for this purpose. But commonly used accessibility measures also embody weaknesses that are seldom acknowledged; these limit their utility for truly understanding the benefits of transit investments. In this paper, we identify the pros and cons of these competing approaches and offer a third strategy. Specifically, we describe how revealed travel behavior data, …

Enterprise Environment Modeling For Penetration Testing On The Openstack Virtualization Platform, Vincent Karovic Jr., Jakub Bartalos, Vincent Karovic, Michal Gregus

Journal of Global Business Insights

The article presents the design of a model environment for penetration testing of an organization using virtualization. The need for this model was based on the constantly increasing requirements for the security of information systems, both in legal terms and in accordance with international security standards. The model was created based on a specific team from the unnamed company. The virtual working environment offered the same functions as the physical environment. The virtual working environment was created in OpenStack and tested with a Linux distribution Kali Linux. We demonstrated that the virtual environment is functional and its security testable. Virtualizing …

Occupational Health And Job Satisfaction Assessment Of Bus Rapid Transit (Brt) Drivers, Alireza Samerei, Kayvan Aghabayk, Alireza Soltani

Journal of Public Transportation

Several studies have focused on ergonomics of commercial and urban bus drivers; however, there exists a dearth of research on BRT drivers. This study was conducted to investigate the factors affecting the BRT drivers' mental health and satisfaction. The study was carried out on 171 BRT drivers in Tehran, Iran. The required data were collected through two questionnaires. The Classification and Regression Tree (CART) and Hierarchical clustering (HC) was used to extract factors affecting mental health and satisfaction of BRT drivers. The important factors affecting BRT drivers' mental health were: dispute with passengers, depression, BMI, criminal behaviours of passengers, driver's …

Increasing Boarding Lost Time At Regular Bus Stops During Rainy Conditions: A Case Study, Margarita Novales, Alfonso Orro, José-Benito Pérez-López, Jorge Feal, Miguel R. Bugarín

Journal of Public Transportation

Inclement weather conditions affect the behavior of travelers and transportation system operations. Understanding this influence can help improve operational planning schemes for any mode of transport, especially for buses. One of the factors that can be affected by rainfall is the time expended by a passenger from the moment a bus opens its doors until he/she boards the bus. This time is known as the boarding lost time (BLT); it was first introduced in the last edition of the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual (TCQSM). TCQSM only considers the BLT for bus rapid transit (BRT) stations with more …

Modeling Bus Bunching And Anti-Bunching Control Accounting For Signal Control And Passenger Swapping Behavior, Qi Xin, Rui Fu, Shaowei Yu, Satish V. Ukkusuri, Rui Jiang

Journal of Public Transportation

The conventional bus propagation process has two main shortcomings: one is bus bunching, the other is extra energy consumption by idling at signalized intersection and unexpected speed variation along the route. To overcome these problems simultaneously, an extended bus propagation model and an anti-bunching control are proposed. To extend the time-based bus propagation model, we employ finite state machine and intelligent driver model to establish a spatial-temporal based bus propagation model accounting for bus dynamic motion and passenger swapping behavior between bunching buses. To mitigate bus bunching and improve bus fuel economy in a cyber-traffic environment, an anticipated average speed …

Assessing Impacts Of 5th Generation (5g) Cellular Telecommunications On Internet Of Things (Iot) Deployments, Michael Love, Marwan Jamal

Military Cyber Affairs

The Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging as a primary enabler of the transformation to digital business services in today’s economy. At the same time, 5^th Generation (5G) cellular transport technology is emerging as a viable means to support IoT data requirements. Although 5G is still in its infancy, DoD leaders need to understand the impacts that 5G will have on IoT projects as there are several challenges involved with integrating 5G into IoT. In order to achieve the maximum benefits of high bandwidth, low latency and superior performance, an entirely new grid of cell sites and access units …

Human-Machine Teaming And Its Legal And Ethical Implications, Jim Q. Chen, Thomas Wingfield

Military Cyber Affairs

Humans rely on machines in accomplishing missions while machines need humans to make them more intelligent and more powerful. Neither side can go without the other, especially in complex environments when autonomous mode is initiated. Things are becoming more complicated when law and ethical principles should be applied in these complex environments. One of the solutions is human-machine teaming, as it takes advantage of both the best humans can offer and the best that machines can provide. This article intends to explore ways of implementing law and ethical principles in artificial intelligence (AI) systems using human-machine teaming. It examines the …

Three Emerging Innovative Technologies Required For Cyber Operations To Execute Commander’S Intent At Machine Speed, Andrew Stewart

Military Cyber Affairs

Decision advantage for the DoD and Combined Cyber Operations results from the secure, seamless, and rapid maneuver of data and information. In the DoD’s 2018 Artificial Intelligence Strategy, the DoD recognized that it must, “put in place key building blocks and platforms to scale and democratize access to AI. This includes creating a common foundation of shared data, reusable tools, frameworks and standards, and cloud and edge services.”[1] More than ever, integrated, adaptive cyber operations provide the means of maneuver for data to enable DoD’s decision advantage-based goals. To support this vision, the integrated implementation three innovative cyber technologies …