Engineering Commons^™

Behavioral Biometrics-Based Continuous User Authentication, Sanket Vilas Salunke

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The field of cybersecurity is exploring new ways to defend against cyber-attacks, including a technique called continuous user authentication. This method uses keystroke (typing) data to continuously match the user's typing pattern with patterns previously recorded using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the user. While this approach has the potential to improve security, it also has some challenges, including the time it takes to register a user, the performance of machine learning algorithms on real-world data, and latency within the system. In this study, the researchers proposed solutions to these issues by using transfer learning to reduce user registration time, …

Cloud Container Security’ Next Move, Vishakha Sadhwani

Dissertations and Theses

In the last few years, it is apparent to cybersecurity experts everywhere that the proverbial container tech genie is out of the bottle, and has been widely embraced across multiple organizations. To achieve the flexibility of building and deploying applications anywhere and everywhere, cloud native environments have gained great momentum and made the development lifecycle simpler than ever. However, container environments brings with them a range of cybersecurity issues that includes images, containers, hosts, runtimes, registries, and orchestration platforms, which needs the necessity to focus on investing in securing your container stack.

According to this report[1], released by cloud-native …

The Observation Of Smart Camera Security, Shun-Hsin Wang

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

At present, as the Internet of Thing (IoT) is increasingly widely used in human life, how to protect IoT devices from Malware attack has become an inevitable problem. This project is an analysis of two malwares and how they impact the Internet of Thing (IoT), especially the smart cameras common in people’s life and used in the enterprise. The analysis looks at the vulnerabilities of smart cameras and how Mirai malware and Persirai malware take advantage to these vulnerabilities to attack smart cameras within the network through the simulation process. Through the simulation, although both malwares were implemented using different …

A Retrospective On 2022 Cyber Incidents In The Wind Energy Sector And Building Future Cyber Resilience, Megan Egan

Cyber Operations and Resilience Program Graduate Projects

Between February and June 2022, multiple wind energy sector companies were hit by cyber-attacks impacting their ability to monitor and control wind turbines. With projected growth in the United States of 110.66 GW from 2020 to 2030, wind energy will increasingly be a critical source of electricity for the United States and an increasingly valuable target for cyberattacks. This paper shows the importance of redundant remote communications, secure third-party providers, and improving response and recovery processes that would ensure this growth period fulfills its potential as a unique opportunity to build in cyber resilience from the outset of new installations …

Cyber Resilience Analytics For Cyber-Physical Systems, Md Ariful Haque

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are complex systems that evolve from the integrations of components dealing with physical processes and real-time computations, along with networking. CPSs often incorporate approaches merging from different scientific fields such as embedded systems, control systems, operational technology, information technology systems (ITS), and cybernetics. Today critical infrastructures (CIs) (e.g., energy systems, electric grids, etc.) and other CPSs (e.g., manufacturing industries, autonomous transportation systems, etc.) are experiencing challenges in dealing with cyberattacks. Major cybersecurity concerns are rising around CPSs because of their ever-growing use of information technology based automation. Often the security concerns are limited to probability-based possible attack …

Software Protection And Secure Authentication For Autonomous Vehicular Cloud Computing, Muhammad Hataba

Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing every technology we deal with. Autonomy has been a sought-after goal in vehicles, and now more than ever we are very close to that goal. Vehicles before were dumb mechanical devices, now they are becoming smart, computerized, and connected coined as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Moreover, researchers found a way to make more use of these enormous capabilities and introduced Autonomous Vehicles Cloud Computing (AVCC). In these platforms, vehicles can lend their unused resources and sensory data to join AVCC.

In this dissertation, we investigate security and privacy issues in AVCC. As background, we built our …

Supporting The Discovery, Reuse, And Validation Of Cybersecurity Requirements At The Early Stages Of The Software Development Lifecycle, Jessica Antonia Steinmann

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The focus of this research is to develop an approach that enhances the elicitation and specification of reusable cybersecurity requirements. Cybersecurity has become a global concern as cyber-attacks are projected to cost damages totaling more than $10.5 trillion dollars by 2025. Cybersecurity requirements are more challenging to elicit than other requirements because they are nonfunctional requirements that requires cybersecurity expertise and knowledge of the proposed system. The goal of this research is to generate cybersecurity requirements based on knowledge acquired from requirements elicitation and analysis activities, to provide cybersecurity specifications without requiring the specialized knowledge of a cybersecurity expert, and …

Machine Learning And Artificial Intelligence Methods For Cybersecurity Data Within The Aviation Ecosystem, Anna Baron Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Aviation cybersecurity research has proven to be a complex topic due to the intricate nature of the aviation ecosystem. Over the last two decades, research has been centered on isolated modules of the entire aviation systems, and it has lacked the state-of-the-art tools (e.g. ML/AI methods) that other cybersecurity disciplines have leveraged in their fields. Security research in aviation in the last two decades has mainly focused on: (i) reverse engineering avionics and software certification; (ii) communications due to the rising new technologies of Software Defined Radios (SDRs); (iii) networking cybersecurity concerns such as the inter and intra connections of …

Development Of A Security-Focused Multi-Channel Communication Protocol And Associated Quality Of Secure Service (Qoss) Metrics, Paul M. Simon

Theses and Dissertations

The threat of eavesdropping, and the challenge of recognizing and correcting for corrupted or suppressed information in communication systems is a consistent challenge. Effectively managing protection mechanisms requires an ability to accurately gauge the likelihood or severity of a threat, and adapt the security features available in a system to mitigate the threat. This research focuses on the design and development of a security-focused communication protocol at the session-layer based on a re-prioritized communication architecture model and associated metrics. From a probabilistic model that considers data leakage and data corruption as surrogates for breaches of confidentiality and integrity, a set …

Anonymization & Generation Of Network Packet Datasets Using Deep Learning, Spencer K. Vecile

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Corporate networks are constantly bombarded by malicious actors trying to gain access. The current state of the art in protecting networks is deep learning-based intrusion detection systems (IDS). However, for an IDS to be effective it needs to be trained on a good dataset. The best datasets for training an IDS are real data captured from large corporate networks. Unfortunately, companies cannot release their network data due to privacy concerns creating a lack of public cybersecurity data. In this thesis I take a novel approach to network dataset anonymization using character-level LSTM models to learn the characteristics of a dataset; …

Power Market Cybersecurity And Profit-Targeting Cyberattacks, Qiwei Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies and business to operate through remote platforms, which has made everyday life and everyone more digitally connected than ever before. The cybersecurity has become a bigger priority in all aspects of life. A few real-world cases have demonstrated the current capability of cyberattacks as in [1], [2], and [3]. These cases invalidate the traditional belief that cyberattacks are unable to penetrate real-world industrial systems. Beyond the physical damage, some attackers target financial arbitrage advantages brought by false data injection attacks (FDIAs) [4]. Malicious breaches into power market operations could induce catastrophic consequences on …

Cybersecurity Of Agricultural Machinery: Exploring Cybersecurity Risks And Solutions For Secure Agricultural Machines, Mark Freyhof

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Modern agriculture is reliant on agricultural machinery for the production of food, fuel, and other agricultural products. The need for producing large quantities of quality agricultural products while sustainably stewarding environmental resources has led to the integration of numerous digital technologies into modern agricultural machinery, such as the CAN bus and telematic control units (Liu et al., 2021). An unintended drawback of these integrated digital technologies is the opportunity for these components to become cyberattack vectors. Cyberattack instances have increasingly targeted critical infrastructures, with numerous reports from agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland …

A Novel Testbed For Evaluation Of Operational Technology Communications Protocols And Their On-Device Implementations, Matthew Boeding

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Operational Technology (OT) and Infrastructure Technology (IT) systems are converging with the rapid addition of centralized remote management in OT systems. Previously air-gapped systems are now interconnected through the internet with application-specific protocols. This has led to systems that had limited access points being remotely accessible. In different OT sectors, legacy protocols previously transmitted over serial communication were updated to allow internet communication with legacy devices. New protocols such as IEC-61850 were also introduced for monitoring of different OT resources. The IEC-61850 standard’s Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) protocol outlines the representation and communication of a variety of different …

Predictors Of Email Response: Determinants Of The Intention Of Not Following Security Recommendations, Miguel Angel Toro-Jarrin

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Organizations and government leaders are concerned about cyber incidents. For some time, researchers have studied what motivates people to act in ways that put the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information in organizations at risk. Still, several areas remained unexplored, including the role of employees’ evaluation of the organizational systems and the role of value orientation at work as precursors of secure and insecure actions in relation to information technologies (information security [IS] action). The objective of this research project was to examine how the evaluations of formal and informal security norms are associated with the intention to follow them …

Cyber Deception For Critical Infrastructure Resiliency, Md Ali Reza Al Amin

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The high connectivity of modern cyber networks and devices has brought many improvements to the functionality and efficiency of networked systems. Unfortunately, these benefits have come with many new entry points for attackers, making systems much more vulnerable to intrusions. Thus, it is critically important to protect cyber infrastructure against cyber attacks. The static nature of cyber infrastructure leads to adversaries performing reconnaissance activities and identifying potential threats. Threats related to software vulnerabilities can be mitigated upon discovering a vulnerability and-, developing and releasing a patch to remove the vulnerability. Unfortunately, the period between discovering a vulnerability and applying a …

Actuator Cyberattack Handling Using Lyapunov-Based Economic Model Predictive Control, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Henrique Oyama, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cybersecurity has gained increasing interest as a consequence of the potential impacts of cyberattacks on profits and safety. While attacks can affect various components of a plant, prior work from our group has focused on the impact of cyberattacks on control components such as process sensors and actuators and the development of detection strategies for cybersecurity derived from control theory. In this work, we provide greater focus on actuator attacks; specifically, we extend a detection and control strategy previously applied for sensor attacks and based on an optimization-based control technique called Lyapunov-based economic model predictive control (LEMPC) to detect attacks …

Quantum Computing And Resilient Design Perspectives For Cybersecurity Of Feedback Systems, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Jihan Abou Halloun, Henrique Oyama, Samantha Cherney, Ilham Azali Assoumani, Nazir Jairazbhoy, Helen Durand, Simon Ka Ng

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cybersecurity of control systems is an important issue in next-generation manufac- turing that can impact both operational objectives (safety and performance) as well as process designs (via hazard analysis). Cyberattacks differ from faults in that they can be coordinated efforts to exploit system vulnerabilities to create otherwise unlikely hazard scenarios. Because coordination and targeted process manipulation can be characteristics of attacks, some of the tactics previously analyzed in our group from a control system cybersecurity perspective have incorporated randomness to attempt to thwart attacks. The underlying assumption for the generation of this randomness has been that it can be achieved …

Quantum Computing And Resilient Design Perspectives For Cybersecurity Of Feedback Systems, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Jihan Abou Halloun, Henrique Oyama, Samantha Cherney, Ilham Azali Assoumani, Nazir Jairazbhoy, Helen Durand, Simon Ka Ng

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cybersecurity of control systems is an important issue in next-generation manufac- turing that can impact both operational objectives (safety and performance) as well as process designs (via hazard analysis). Cyberattacks differ from faults in that they can be coordinated efforts to exploit system vulnerabilities to create otherwise unlikely hazard scenarios. Because coordination and targeted process manipulation can be characteristics of attacks, some of the tactics previously analyzed in our group from a control system cybersecurity perspective have incorporated randomness to attempt to thwart attacks. The underlying assumption for the generation of this randomness has been that it can be achieved …

Towards A Cybersecurity Testbed For Agricultural Vehicles And Environments, Mark Freyhof, George Grispos, Santosh Pitla, Cody Stolle

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

In today’s modern farm, an increasing number of agricultural systems and vehicles are connected to the Internet. While the benefits of networked agricultural machinery are attractive, this technological shift is also creating an environment that is conducive to cyberattacks. While previous research has focused on general cybersecurity concerns in the farming and agricultural industries, minimal research has focused on techniques for identifying security vulnerabilities within actual agricultural systems that could be exploited by cybercriminals. Hence, this paper presents STAVE – a Security Testbed for Agricultural Vehicles and Environments – as a potential solution to assist with the identification of cybersecurity …

Investigation Of Python Variable Privacy, Joshua Bartholomew

Honors Theses

This study looks at the relative security of Python regarding private variables and functions used in most other programming languages. Python has only grown in popularity due to its simple syntax and developing capabilities. However, little research has been published about how secure Python code and programs compiled from Python code actually are. This research seeks to expose vulnerabilities in Python code and determine what must be done for these vulnerabilities to be exploited by hackers to abuse potentially sensitive information contained within the program.

The proposed methodology includes examining the private variable concept in other programming languages and conducting …

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 …

The Applications Of The Internet Of Things In The Medical Field, Cody Repass

Theses and Dissertations

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm promises to make “things” include a more generic set of entities such as smart devices, sensors, human beings, and any other IoT objects to be accessible at anytime and anywhere. IoT varies widely in its applications, and one of its most beneficial uses is in the medical field. However, the large attack surface and vulnerabilities of IoT systems needs to be secured and protected. Security is a requirement for IoT systems in the medical field where the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) applies.

This work investigates various applications of IoT in healthcare …

Deapsecure Computational Training For Cybersecurity: Third-Year Improvements And Impacts, Bahador Dodge, Jacob Strother, Rosby Asiamah, Karina Arcaute, Wirawan Purwanto, Masha Sosonkina, Hongyi Wu

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

The Data-Enabled Advanced Training Program for Cybersecurity Research and Education (DeapSECURE) was introduced in 2018 as a non-degree training consisting of six modules covering a broad range of cyberinfrastructure techniques, including high performance computing, big data, machine learning and advanced cryptography, aimed at reducing the gap between current cybersecurity curricula and requirements needed for advanced research and industrial projects. By its third year, DeapSECURE, like many other educational endeavors, experienced abrupt changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The training had to be retooled to adapt to fully online delivery. Hands-on activities were reformatted to accommodate self-paced learning. In this paper, …

Ransomware Incident Preparations With Ethical Considerations And Command System Framework Proposal, Stanley Mierzwa, James Drylie, Dennis Bogdan

Center for Cybersecurity

Concerns with cyber-attacks in the form of ransomware are on the mind of many executives and leadership staff in all industries. Inaction is not an option, and approaching the topic with real, honest, and hard discussions will be valuable ahead of such a possible devastating experience. This research note aims to bring thoughtfulness to the topics of ethics in the role of cybersecurity when dealing with ransomware events. Additionally, a proposed set of non-technical recovery preparation tasks are outlined to help organizations bring about cohesiveness and planning for dealing with the real potential of a ransomware event. Constraints from many …

Assessing Security Risks With The Internet Of Things, Faith Mosemann

Senior Honors Theses

For my honors thesis I have decided to study the security risks associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) and possible ways to secure them. I will focus on how corporate, and individuals use IoT devices and the security risks that come with their implementation. In my research, I found out that IoT gadgets tend to go unnoticed as a checkpoint for vulnerability. For example, often personal IoT devices tend to have the default username and password issued from the factory that a hacker could easily find through Google. IoT devices need security just as much as computers or servers …

Detecting Iot Attacks Using An Ensemble Machine Learning Model, Vikas Tomar, Sachin Sharma

Articles

Malicious attacks are becoming more prevalent due to the growing use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in homes, offices, transportation, healthcare, and other locations. By incorporating fog computing into IoT, attacks can be detected in a short amount of time, as the distance between IoT devices and fog devices is smaller than the distance between IoT devices and the cloud. Machine learning is frequently used for the detection of attacks due to the huge amount of data available from IoT devices. However, the problem is that fog devices may not have enough resources, such as processing power and memory, …

Securing Infiniband Networks With End-Point Encryption, Noah B. Diamond

Theses and Dissertations

The NVIDIA-Mellanox Bluefield-2 is a 100 Gbps high-performance network interface which offers hardware offload and acceleration features that can operate directly on network traffic without routine involvement from the ARM CPU. This allows the ARM multi-core CPU to orchestrate the hardware to perform operations on both Ethernet and RDMA traffic at high rates rather than processing all the traffic directly. A testbed called TNAP was created for performance testing and a MiTM verification process called MiTMVMP is used to ensure proper network configuration. The hardware accelerators of the Bluefield-2 support a throughput of nearly 86 Gbps when using IPsec to …

Removing The Veil: Shining Light On The Lack Of Inclusivity In Cybersecurity Education For Students With Disabilities, Felicia Hellems, Sajal Bhatia

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

There are currently over one billion people living with some form of disability worldwide. The continuous increase in new technologies in today's society comes with an increased risk in security. A fundamental knowledge of cybersecurity should be a basic right available to all users of technology. A review of literature in the fields of cybersecurity, STEM, and computer science (CS) has revealed existent gaps regarding educational methods for teaching cybersecurity to students with disabilities (SWD's). To date, SWD's are largely left without equitable access to cybersecurity education. Our goal is to identify current educational methods being used to teach SWD's …

A Trusted Platform For Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Bridge Inspection Management System, Hwapyeong Song

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Bridge inspection has a pivotal role in assuring the safety of critical structures constituting society. However, high cost, worker safety, and low objectivity of quality are classic problems in traditional visual inspection. Recent trends in bridge inspection have led to a proliferation of research utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This thesis proposes a Trusted Platform for Bridge Inspection Management System (Trusted-BIMS) for safe and efficient bridge inspection by proving the UAV-based inspection process and improving the prototype of the previous study. Designed based on a Zero-Trust (ZT) strategy, Trusted-BIMS consist of (1) a database-driven web framework with security features for …

Examining Cooperative System Responses Against Grid Integrity Attacks, Alexander D. Parady

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Smart grid technologies are integral to society’s transition to sustainable energy sources, but they do not come without a cost. As the energy sector shifts away from a century’s reliance on fossil fuels and centralized generation, technology that actively monitors and controls every aspect of the power infrastructure has been widely adopted, resulting in a plethora of new vulnerabilities that have already wreaked havoc on critical infrastructure. Integrity attacks that feedback false data through industrial control systems, which result in possible catastrophic overcorrections and ensuing failures, have plagued grid infrastructure over the past several years. This threat is now at …