1 / 20

Research Interest overview and future directions

Research Interest overview and future directions. Mina Guirguis Computer Science Department Texas State University – San Marcos CS5300 9/16/2011. Research areas. Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems Security in networks and systems Digital Forensics Networks. Mobile Cyber-Physical System.

fairbanksc
Download Presentation

Research Interest overview and future directions

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Research Interest overview and future directions Mina Guirguis Computer Science Department Texas State University – San Marcos CS5300 9/16/2011

  2. Research areas • Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems • Security in networks and systems • Digital Forensics • Networks

  3. Mobile Cyber-Physical System • Cyber-Physical System (CPS) • Combine computation and communication with our physical world • Intelligent buildings • Robotics surgery • Control systems • Mobile CPSs • Subclass of CPSs where physical systems are mobile • Cell phones, robots, cars, etc…

  4. Motivating example • First feature video from the iRobot • In military applications

  5. Other motivating examples

  6. Research vision and goal • Vision: environment in which mobile nodes collaborate to solve problems • Robots communicate to achieve a specific task • Cell phones share resources (CPU, network, power) • Cars coordinate to realize an intelligent transportation system • Goal: ensure that Mobile CPS applications are safe and secure

  7. Challenges • Mobile CPSs will rely on wireless communication • Attackers can interfere with/jam the signal between mobile nodes, preventing them from communicating • Mobile CPSs are emerging as complex systems • Complex systems are easier to attack and harder to debug • Mobile CPSs will make decisions under failures • Control theory address noise due to random failure • Attacks are not random failures, but well orchestrated

  8. General research approach • Play the role: offense • Identifying optimal and suboptimal attack policies • What is the worst adversarial signal that would cripple the system at this point in time? • How can an attacker evade detection? • Play the role: defense • Randomization: make the system less predictable • Attacker would not be able to mount potent attacks

  9. Mobile CPS Lab • 4 iRobot Create, each with a netbook on top • Camera, wireless, sensors • 2 SRV-1 Blackfin robots • Open source • Camera, wireless, sensors • Servers and laptops for simulation and numerical analysis

  10. Research areas • Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems • Security in networks and systems • Digital Forensics • Networks

  11. Network and systems security • Second feature video from a movie • “Untraceable” the movie 2008

  12. Research agenda • Goal: ensure secure and resilient networking and system components • Denial of Service (DoS) attacks • Uninteresting -- easy to trace back to the heavy hitters • More interesting: Identify stealthy attacks • Do not take a lot of resources to mount • Undetectable • Untraceable

  13. Stealthy attacks • Idea: to exploit “adaptation mechanisms” found in networks and computing systems • Adapting content based on load • Adapting traffic rates based on congestion • Balancing traffic across servers • Reorganizing a P2P network • Analogy: Make other drivers brake when they should accelerate and accelerate when they should brake

  14. Illustrative example… • DoS attacks (exploiting capacity) • Low-rate attacks (exploiting adaptation)

  15. Exploiting adaptation • Adaptation mechanisms are designed under the assumption of non-adversarial loads • Examples: random traffic patterns, random arrival processes, etc.) • What types (patterns) of load would make adaptation harmful? • What are the tradeoffs between efficiency and tolerance to dynamic exploits?

  16. Research areas • Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems • Security in networks and systems • Digital Forensics • Networks

  17. Digital forensics • Vision: Build effective tools to recover, examine and preserve digital evidence • Examples of digital evidence: • Financial fraud documents • Threatening/blackmail emails • Contraband material • Viruses, worms, trojans, backdoors, spyware, etc… • Incriminating network connections • Steganography channels for espionage

  18. Digital forensics • Goal: Help investigators extract evidence from a computer or a digital device (iPad, iPhone, mp3 player) • Done very carefully to be admissible in court • Offline versus Online (live response) • Speed up the process of finding evidence • Requires knowledge that spans different areas: • Networks, systems, security, statistics, image processing, criminal law, etc…

  19. Research areas • Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems • Security in networks and systems • Digital Forensics • Networks

  20. Final remarks • My email address: msg@txstate.edu • Office hours: • Mondays: 4:30 – 6:00 (in Round Rock) • Tuesdays: 3:30 - 5:00 (in San Marcos) • Thursdays: 10:00 – 12:00 (in San Marcos)

More Related