Other Computer Engineering Commons^™

Mitigating Common Vulnerabilities And Exposures In Cobol-Based Critical Systems Using The Strangler-Fig Pattern, Lauren E. Caruso, Vincent J. Compeau, Assefaw H. Gebremedhin

Military Cyber Affairs

COBOL-based legacy systems continue to underpin critical infrastructure in banking and government sectors despite their age and associated cybersecurity risks. Originally developed through a Department of Defense–sponsored initiative to standardize business computing, COBOL remains widely used in mission-critical environments. However, these systems face increasing vulnerabilities due to outdated security architectures, workforce shortages, and rising maintenance costs. This paper examines cybersecurity and operational challenges associated with COBOL systems and evaluates the Strangler Fig pattern as a modernization strategy that enables incremental replacement while maintaining continuity. The findings highlight implications for financial institutions and public-sector organizations dependent on legacy infrastructure.

Ai Cyber First Responders: Bottleneck Analysis Of Heterogeneous Cpu–Gpu Pipelines For Security Operations Center Triage, Christine Pierce

Harrisburg University Other Works

Abstract — Modern Security Operations Centers (SOCs) must continuously process massive volumes of heterogeneous security telemetry while meeting stringent throughput, latency, and operational continuity requirements. Although transformer-based artificial intelligence has significantly improved threat detection and alert prioritization, most cybersecurity research evaluates model accuracy rather than the end-to-end behavior of AI-enabled operational pipelines. Consequently, relatively little is known about how heterogeneous CPU–GPU coordination, scheduling overhead, memory movement, and synchronization collectively influence operational SOC performance. This paper presents the AI Cyber First Responder, a heterogeneous SOC triage architecture that integrates GPU-accelerated transformer inference with CPU-based doctrine-driven reasoning to investigate end-to-end pipeline behavior …

Case Study: Feasibility Of Creating A Simulated Mobile Data Center For Cross-Disciplinary Academic Programs, Stanley Mierzwa, Christoper J. Schultz, Iassen Christov, Michael Fagioli, Thomas Ikeda, Reinaldo Jaramillo, Giolian Sanagustin

Center for Cybersecurity

This case study examines the potential to envision, create, and deploy a simulated mobile micro data center solution that can be easily replicated and transported between locations and educational settings. The coined term for this solution is the Mobile AI-Centered Data Center (Mobile ACDC), which provides students with a platform to construct, in a hands-on fashion, such a solution and navigate the product to gain greater competencies and understanding of the components found in a data center. Instructor and student feedback assessments from the pilot classroom modules and laboratory experiential learning activities indicate that such a solution helps to improve …

Analyzing Network Traffic And Data Exfiltration Via Smb In Post-Vm Escape Scenarios, Noah M. Disanza

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Virtual machines (VMs) play a crucial role in modern IT infrastructure environments by providing isolation and enhanced security, among other things, for both personal and corporate systems. VMs are heavily rely upon to safely test malware, manage infrastructure, and reduce risk to host systems. This reliance is so substantial that the idea of reducing risk to the host system is believed to be erasing risk entirely. However, this mindset has shown to be challenged time and time again by the emergence of exploits known as virtual machine escapes. These exploits allow malicious actors to break out of the virtualized environment …

Implications Of Quantum Computing For Enterprise Cybersecurity And Data Integrity, Manikantha Varaprasad Inakollu

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Quantum computing represents a paradigm shift in computational capabilities that poses both unprecedented threats and opportunities for enterprise cybersecurity. This research examines the implications of quantum computing advancement on current cryptographic systems, data protection mechanisms, and organizational security frameworks. Through analysis of quantum computing developments from 2019-2024 and surveys of 280 cybersecurity professionals across various industries, this study identifies critical vulnerabilities in existing encryption standards and explores emerging quantum-resistant solutions. The findings reveal that approximately 78% of enterprises remain unprepared for quantum threats, with current RSA and ECC encryption systems facing potential compromise within the next 10-15 years. The research …

From Devices To The Cloud: Digital Forensics In The Changing Social Media Landscape, Joseph Brown

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis presents a comprehensive digital forensic analysis of emerging and alternative social media platforms, including Truth Social, Threads, Bluesky, Nextdoor, and Neighbors. These platforms, which range from politically aligned alt-tech networks to hyperlocal neighborhood apps, present unique forensic challenges and security vulnerabilities. Across all case studies, established forensic techniques were applied using a hybrid methodology combining mobile device analysis, network traffic monitoring, and API interrogation. Findings include the discovery of plaintext credentials, session tokens, and other sensitive artifacts, particularly in platforms with weaker security postures such as Truth Social, Bluesky, Nextdoor, and Neighbors. Threads, by contrast, demonstrated greater resilience …

Using Blockchain Technology To Help Secure America's Defense Critical Infrastructure, Vimal Buck, Aerin Krebs, Brynn Hillard, Jakob Gerha, Joseph Lutma, Srikar Maduposu, Ted Allen

Military Cyber Affairs

Critical water infrastructure in the United States faces increasing cybersecurity threats from state-sponsored actors, with potentially devastating consequences for national security, economic stability, and public health. (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 2025). This infrastructure supports defense critical assets and is actively being targeted by various state-sponsored hacking groups, which poses a major concern for civilians and military alike. K. Herath (personal communication, February 24, 2025) reported being aware of two attacks on Ohio water systems during his tenure as Cybersecurity Strategic Advisor to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

Water is essential to everyday life and defense and presents as a high-value …

Adversarial Robustness In Advanced Machine Learning Models Integrating Graph Neural Networks And Large Language Models, Mahmoud Nazzal

Dissertations

Artificial intelligence (AI) has achieved remarkable performances across various domains. In most real-world applications, data often takes relational forms, such as graphs and networks, or sequential forms, such as text and time series. As AI evolves, specialized models have emerged to handle these structures; Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) for relational mining and Large Language Models (LLMs) for sequential understanding. Despite their success, these models face challenges in security, robustness, and interpretability. GNNs excel in relational reasoning but are vulnerable to adversarial manipulation and lack interpretability, while LLMs are strong in linguistic reasoning and generalization yet struggle with relational data and …

Privacy Implications Of Data Collection In Android Automotive Os, Bulut Gözübüyük

All Theses

Modern vehicles have become sophisticated computational and sensor systems, as evidenced by advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), in-car infotainment, and autonomous driving capabilities. They collect and process vast amounts of data through various onboard subsystems. One significant player in this landscape is Android Automotive OS (AAOS), which has been integrated into over 100 million vehicles and has become a dominant force in the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) market. With this extensive data collection, privacy concerns have become increasingly crucial. The volume of data gathered by these systems raises questions about how this information is stored, used, and protected, making privacy a …

Machine Learning Based Network Traffic Classification With Cosine-Similarity Based Out-Of-Distribution Detection, Prabhat Edupuganti

Master's Projects

The changes occurring in the amount of encrypted network traffic is growing at an alarming rate. This development has created intricate problems in traffic classification which is vital for effective cybersecurity. Moreover, most frameworks seem to ignore OOD detection, model calibration and novel pattern detection as cornerstone problem areas. The due analysis is presented as a machine learning approach aimed at resolving encrypted traffic classification issues and focuses on novel OOD detection and calibration issues. Primary contributions comprise detection of out-of-distribution states using softmax scaled cosine similarity, advanced variance-based feature elimination, and lowering ECE using stringent NNs. This work demonstrates …

Faux Capabilities: A Novel Approach For Code Analysis, Tanay Godse

Master's Projects

When using third-party packages or libraries, it is crucial to understand their behavior. Typically, this requires developers to either conduct code reviews or set up sandbox environments for testing or write unit tests with mocked values for every function used in their code. However, these approaches are often inefficient and time-consuming. A more effective solution would provide developers with a broad understanding of the functionality required by the code they plan to import. This can be done using object capabilities, where a particular functionality is the capability that an object must possess, in order to be able to perform the …

Application Of Advanced Convolutional Neural Network With Robust Hashing On Obfuscated Image Based Malware Dataset, Sanket Shekhar Kulkarni

Master's Projects

This project report provides in-depth details on the creation of a malware classification system that makes use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) that have been strengthened by data set obfuscation and strong hashing. We test many CNN architectures, including MobileNet, ResNet, and DenseNet, using rigorous hashing and obfuscation techniques on datasets. The entire pipeline is described in this research, which ranges from the gathering and preprocessing of data sets to the application of novel hashing techniques that boost overall accuracy in classification and increase resilience against malicious attacks. Parallel to this, we show that dataset obfuscation adds an additional level …

Crowdstrike Cyber Incident Vs. Past Major Cyber Incidents: Analysis And Solutions, Priyant Banerjee

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

On July 19, 2024, a technical malfunction in CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor software led to a global ITdisruption, affecting millions of devices across multiple sectors. This incident, although not a direct cyber-attack, caused significant operational upheavals reminiscent of major past cyber incidents. This paperexplores the CrowdStrike incident in detail, compares it with previous major cyber events, and proposescomprehensive solutions to mitigate such risks in the future.The faulty update from CrowdStrike resulted in widespread system crashes, notably the "Blue Screen ofDeath," paralyzing operations in critical sectors such as healthcare, finance, and transportation. The paperexamines the immediate and cascading effects of the incident, …

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, …

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.

Cyber Attacks Against Industrial Control Systems, Adam Kardorff

LSU Master's Theses

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are the foundation of our critical infrastructure, and allow for the manufacturing of the products we need. These systems monitor and control power plants, water treatment plants, manufacturing plants, and much more. The security of these systems is crucial to our everyday lives and to the safety of those working with ICS. In this thesis we examined how an attacker can take control of these systems using a power plant simulator in the Applied Cybersecurity Lab at LSU. Running experiments on a live environment can be costly and dangerous, so using a simulated environment is the …

Integrating Nist And Iso Cybersecurity Audit And Risk Assessment Frameworks Into Cameroonian Law, Bernard Ngalim

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This paper reviews cybersecurity laws and regulations in Cameroon, focusing on cybersecurity and information security audits and risk assessments. The importance of cybersecurity risk assessment and the implementation of security controls to cure deficiencies noted during risk assessments or audits is a critical step in developing cybersecurity resilience. Cameroon's cybersecurity legal framework provides for audits but does not explicitly enumerate controls. Consequently, integrating relevant controls from the NIST frameworks and ISO Standards can improve the cybersecurity posture in Cameroon while waiting for a comprehensive revision of the legal framework. NIST and ISO are internationally recognized as best practices in information …

Sel4 On Risc-V - Developing High Assurance Platforms With Modular Open-Source Architectures, Michael A. Doran Jr

Masters Theses

Virtualization is now becoming an industry standard for modern embedded systems. Modern embedded systems can now support multiple applications on a single hardware platform while meeting power and cost requirements. Virtualization on an embedded system is achieved through the design of the hardware-software interface. Instruction set architecture, ISA, defines the hardware-software interface for an embedded system. At the hardware level the ISA, provides extensions to support virtualization.

In addition to an ISA that supports hypervisor extensions it is equally important to provide a hypervisor completely capable of exploiting the benefits of virtualization for securing modern embedded systems. Currently there does …

Unveiling The Digital Shadows: Cybersecurity And The Art Of Digital Forensics, Derek Beardall

Cyber Operations and Resilience Program Graduate Projects

This paper navigates the symbiotic relationship between cybersecurity and digital forensics, exploring the profound role of digital forensic methodologies in addressing cyber incidents. Beginning with foundational definitions and historical evolution, this study delves into diverse types of methodologies and their applications across law enforcement and cybersecurity domains. The mechanics of cyber incident response illuminates the strategic orchestration of digital forensic methodologies. Amidst triumphs, challenges emerge from the shadows: swift threat evolution, digital ecosystem complexity, standardization gaps, resource limitations, and legal intricacies. Best practices guide experts through this intricate terrain, culminating in an enhanced understanding of the inseparable bond between cybersecurity …

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 …

Detection Of Crypto-Ransomware Attack Using Deep Learning, Muna Jemal

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

The number one threat to the digital world is the exponential increase in ransomware attacks. Ransomware is malware that prevents victims from accessing their resources by locking or encrypting the data until a ransom is paid. With individuals and businesses growing dependencies on technology and the Internet, researchers in the cyber security field are looking for different measures to prevent malicious attackers from having a successful campaign. A new ransomware variant is being introduced daily, thus behavior-based analysis of detecting ransomware attacks is more effective than the traditional static analysis. This paper proposes a multi-variant classification to detect ransomware I/O …

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.

Bridging The Gap Between Public Organizaions And Cybersecurity, Christopher Boutros

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Cyberattacks are a major problem for public organizations across the nation, and unfortunately for them, the frequency of these attacks is constantly growing. This project used a case study approach to explore the types of cybersecurity public organization agencies face and how those crimes can be mitigated. The goal of this paper is to understand how public organization agencies have prepared for cyberattacks and discuss additional suggestions to improve their current systems with the current research available This research provides an analysis of current cyber security systems, new technologies that can be implemented, roadblocks public agencies face before and during …

Enhancing Cyberspace Monitoring In The United States Aviation Industry: A Multi-Layered Approach For Addressing Emerging Threats, Matthew Janson

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This research project examined the cyberspace domain in the United States (U.S.) aviation industry from many different angles. The research involved learning about the U.S. aviation cyberspace environment, the landscape of cyber threats, new technologies like 5G and smart airports, cybersecurity frameworks and best practices, and the use of aviation cyberspace monitoring capabilities. The research looked at how vulnerable the aviation industry is from cyber-attacks, analyzed the possible effects of cyber-attacks on the industry, and suggests ways to improve the industry's cybersecurity posture. The project's main goal was to protect against possible cyber-attacks and make sure that the aviation industry …

An Empirical Study Of Pre-Trained Model Reuse In The Hugging Face Deep Learning Model Registry, Wenxin Jiang, Nicholas Synovic, Matt Hyatt, Taylor R. Schorlemmer, Rohan Sethi, Yung-Hsiang Lu, George K. Thiruvathukal, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are being adopted as components in software systems. Creating and specializing DNNs from scratch has grown increasingly difficult as state-of-the-art architectures grow more complex. Following the path of traditional software engineering, machine learning engineers have begun to reuse large-scale pre-trained models (PTMs) and fine-tune these models for downstream tasks. Prior works have studied reuse practices for traditional software packages to guide software engineers towards better package maintenance and dependency management. We lack a similar foundation of knowledge to guide behaviors in pre-trained model ecosystems.

In this work, we present the first empirical investigation of PTM reuse. …

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 …

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 …

Book Review: This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2020) By Nicole Perlroth, Amy C. Gaudion

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Towards Verifying Smartphone Users Via Gripping Hand Image Classification, Kaitlyn M. Madden

LSU Master's Theses

Smartphones continue to proliferate throughout our daily lives, not only in sheer quantity but also their ever-growing list of uses. They are no longer just for communication and the occasional phone game. Smartphones can be used to open garage doors, transfer money, see who is at your front door, and much, much more. With this increased dependence and use, smartphone security is critical. In this paper we propose a system to verify a user’s identity by applying a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to an image of the user’s hand while holding their device. This model aims to address situations …

Energy Considerations In Blockchain-Enabled Applications, Cesar Enrique Castellon Escobar

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Blockchain-powered smart systems deployed in different industrial applications promise operational efficiencies and improved yields, while mitigating significant cybersecurity risks pertaining to the main application. Associated tradeoffs between availability and security arise at implementation, however, triggered by the additional resources (e.g., memory, computation) required by each blockchain-enabled host. This thesis applies an energy-reducing algorithmic engineering technique for Merkle Tree root and Proof of Work calculations, two principal elements of blockchain computations, as a means to preserve the promised security benefits but with less compromise to system availability. Using pyRAPL, a python library to measure computational energy, we experiment with both the …