Engineering Commons^™

Analysis Of Deep Learning Methods For Wired Ethernet Physical Layer Security Of Operational Technology, Lucas Torlay

All Theses

The cybersecurity of power systems is jeopardized by the threat of spoofing and man-in-the-middle style attacks due to a lack of physical layer device authentication techniques for operational technology (OT) communication networks. OT networks cannot support the active probing cybersecurity methods that are popular in information technology (IT) networks. Furthermore, both active and passive scanning techniques are susceptible to medium access control (MAC) address spoofing when operating at Layer 2 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. This thesis aims to analyze the role of deep learning in passively authenticating Ethernet devices by their communication signals. This method operates at …

Another Brick In The Wall: An Exploratory Analysis Of Digital Forensics Programs In The United States, Syria Mccullough, Stella Abudu, Ebere Onwubuariri, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present a comprehensive review of digital forensics programs offered by universities across the United States (U.S.). While numerous studies on digital forensics standards and curriculum exist, few, if any, have examined digital forensics courses offered across the nation. Since digital forensics courses vary from university to university, online course catalogs for academic institutions were evaluated to curate a dataset. Universities were selected based on online searches, similar to those that would be made by prospective students. Ninety-seven (n = 97) degree programs in the U.S. were evaluated. Overall, results showed that advanced technical courses are missing from curricula. We …

Quantifying Cyber Risk By Integrating Attack Graph And Impact Graph, Omer F. Keskin

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Being a relatively new risk source, models to quantify cyber risks are not well developed; therefore, cyber risk management in most businesses depends on qualitative assessments. With the increase in the economic consequences of cyber incidents, the importance of quantifying cyber risks has increased. Cyber risk quantification is also needed to establish communication among decision-makers of different levels of an enterprise, from technical personnel to top management.

The goal of this research is to build a probabilistic cybersecurity risk analysis model that relates attack propagation with impact propagation through internal dependencies and allows temporal analysis.

The contributions of the developed …

A Framework To Detect The Susceptibility Of Employees To Social Engineering Attacks, Hashim H. Alneami

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Social engineering attacks (SE-attacks) in enterprises are hastily growing and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Generally, SE-attacks involve the psychological manipulation of employees into revealing confidential and valuable company data to cybercriminals. The ramifications could bring devastating financial and irreparable reputation loss to the companies. Because SE-attacks involve a human element, preventing these attacks can be tricky and challenging and has become a topic of interest for many researchers and security experts. While methods exist for detecting SE-attacks, our literature review of existing methods identified many crucial factors such as the national cultural, organizational, and personality traits of employees that enable …

Cross Domain Iw Threats To Sof Maritime Missions: Implications For U.S. Sof, Gary C. Kessler, Diane M. Zorri

Publications

As cyber vulnerabilities proliferate with the expansion of connected devices, wherein security is often forsaken for ease of use, Special Operations Forces (SOF) cannot escape the obvious, massive risk that they are assuming by incorporating emerging technologies into their toolkits. This is especially true in the maritime sector where SOF operates nearshore in littoral zones. As SOF—in support to the U.S. Navy— increasingly operate in these contested maritime environments, they will gradually encounter more hostile actors looking to exploit digital vulnerabilities. As such, this monograph comes at a perfect time as the world becomes more interconnected but also more vulnerable.

Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Using Graph Theoretical Anomaly Detection And Machine Learning, Goksel Kucukkaya

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The cyber domain is a great business enabler providing many types of enterprises new opportunities such as scaling up services, obtaining customer insights, identifying end-user profiles, sharing data, and expanding to new communities. However, the cyber domain also comes with its own set of risks. Cybersecurity risk assessment helps enterprises explore these new opportunities and, at the same time, proportionately manage the risks by establishing cyber situational awareness and identifying potential consequences. Anomaly detection is a mechanism to enable situational awareness in the cyber domain. However, anomaly detection also requires one of the most extensive sets of data and features …

Infiniband Network Monitoring: Challenges And Possibilities, Kyle D. Hintze

Theses and Dissertations

Within the realm of High Performance Computing, the InfiniBand Architecture is among the leading interconnects used today. Capable of providing high bandwidth and low latency, InfiniBand is finding applications outside the High Performance Computing domain. One of these is critical infrastructure, encompassing almost all essential sectors as the work force becomes more connected. InfiniBand is not immune to security risks, as prior research has shown that common traffic analyzing tools cannot effectively monitor InfiniBand traffic transmitted between hosts, due to the kernel bypass nature of the IBA in conjunction with Remote Direct Memory Access operations. If Remote Direct Memory Access …

Role Of Artificial Intelligence In The Internet Of Things (Iot) Cybersecurity, Murat Kuzlu, Corinne Fair, Ozgur Guler

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

In recent years, the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) has increased exponentially, and cybersecurity concerns have increased along with it. On the cutting edge of cybersecurity is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is used for the development of complex algorithms to protect networks and systems, including IoT systems. However, cyber-attackers have figured out how to exploit AI and have even begun to use adversarial AI in order to carry out cybersecurity attacks. This review paper compiles information from several other surveys and research papers regarding IoT, AI, and attacks with and against AI and explores the relationship between these …

Cybersecurity Analysis Of Load Frequency Control In Power Systems: A Survey, Sahaj Saxena, Sajal Bhatia, Rahul Gupta

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

Today, power systems have transformed considerably and taken a new shape of geographically distributed systems from the locally centralized systems thereby leading to a new infrastructure in the framework of networked control cyber-physical system (CPS). Among the different important operations to be performed for smooth generation, transmission, and distribution of power, maintaining the scheduled frequency, against any perturbations, is an important one. The load frequency control (LFC) operation actually governs this frequency regulation activity after the primary control. Due to CPS nature, the LFC operation is vulnerable to attacks, both from physical and cyber standpoints. The cyber-attack strategies ranges from …