Cybersecurity engineering design team protects critical infrastructure

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 20:14:10 +0000

Cybersecurity engineering design team protects critical infrastructure Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/05/2021 - 16:14

Industrial control systems (ICS) manage our everyday water, electricity, and gas resources. The same interconnectedness and automation that makes these systems effective and efficient also increases their vulnerability to dangerous attacks that could leave cities and states without essential resources.

A cybersecurity engineering senior design team is testing a scaled-down ICS system provided by Dragos, Inc. to help the company shore up its cybersecurity infrastructure.

Seniors Marissa Costa, Natalie Sebastian, Kyle Simmons, Andrew Smith, Santiago Taboada Patino, and Zaine Wilson are working together to address the problem “Our whole job is to poke around and complete a security assessment on the ICS that Dragos, Inc. provided. We are attacking it and pinpointing vulnerabilities that need to be addressed,” says Patino.

The team is penetration testing numerous components of the system Dragos, Inc. provided them to use. Penetration testing simulates a cyber-attack and pinpoints vulnerabilities. “The penetration testing we are doing is the best way possible to gain an understanding of how a cyber-attack could be carried out. Pen testing is like rating a bridge for how much weight it can support versus actually building a test bridge and driving progressively heavier trucks over it until it collapses,” says Wilson.

Ensuring ICS security like the one the students are working on safeguards our world’s critical infrastructure. Power plants, water distributors, and gas companies all use ICS to protect the delivery of their customers’ essential resources. “Power, water, gas—they all start at one point and end at another, typically people’s homes or businesses. ICS provides the security to safeguard those processes, and without security measures, entire power plants could be shut down by malicious cyber attackers,” says Simmons.

Dragos, Inc. delivered the system to the Fairfax Campus last fall. The team is spending their senior year penetration testing and using the vulnerabilities they find to create detection rules that can be included in future updates. Working with their faculty advisor, Assistant Professor Thomas G. Winston, and a subject matter expert from Dragos, Inc. makes the process as efficient as possible.

The Department of Cyber Security Engineering forges partnerships with companies like Dragos, Inc. to provide real-world projects for students. But this project has a specific impact that made the team excited to start. “Industrial control systems have cyber-physical effects. People can understand it easier as opposed to more obscure cyber-attacks. In this case, a system could be breached, and lives could be lost,” says Wilson.

Attacks like these have occurred across the globe and even close to home. Costa points to a recent attack in the United States that illustrated the vulnerabilities in the system. In February, a cyber attacker hacked a water treatment plant in Florida and remotely adjusted sodium hydroxide levels to more than 100 times the normal level, news outlets reported. Luckily, the system operator noticed the intrusion and immediately reduced the level back, but left unchanged, the water would have been toxic.

Dangerous attacks like those in Florida are why the team’s work is valuable to society.

The team jumped on the chance to work on this project because of its importance. They are excited they are contributing to protecting everyday life. “Industrial control systems like this one involve real people in their homes, people in a community who can be harmed by attacks on these systems," says Costa.

Topics

cyber infrastructure

Cybersecurity

cybersecurity bachelor's program

Senior Capstone Project

Senior Design Project

Senior design team serves those who serve

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:33:28 +0000

Senior design team serves those who serve Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/15/2021 - 08:33

Topics

mechanical engineering

Veterans

Senior Design Project

Research

Student Research

diversity

Volgenau School of Engineering

Left to right: Taha Imtiaz, Erwin Alicic, Nicolas Corley, Soheil Shadian, Jon Licata, and Tanner Holland worked with industry partners and their faculty advisor to give back to an Army veteran. Photo by Evan Cantwell.

Our warfighters have sacrificed a great deal to serve our country, and a Mason mechanical engineering senior design team is paying it forward to a veteran who needed an innovative engineering solution to improve everyday life.

Seniors Erwin Alicic, Taha Imtiaz, Jon Licata, Tanner Holland, Nicolas Corley, and Soheil Shadian are working with Quality of Life Plus (QL+), a non-profit that aims to use innovation to improve the quality of life for those who have served our country. The team’s challenger, an Army veteran who uses a wheelchair, tasked the team with designing and building a one-of-a-kind wheelchair.

“Our challenger needs to be able to more easily go up inclines in her wheelchair while carrying groceries or other items. Right now, it is hard for her to push herself up a hill or ramp while also carrying her things,” says Alicic, the team leader.

Upon receiving their challenge at the start of the fall 2020 semester, the team jumped right into devising a plan to see the project through from start to finish. They divided roles, brainstormed design concepts that tackled her specific needs, and they continue to play on each other’s strengths as they execute the project.

“We looked at who had what strengths or had more experience in areas of our project and assigned those roles accordingly. Each person acts as a specialist in their area,” says Alicic. “There are a lot of things to consider with building this wheelchair, like balance, safety, and ease of use. Our challenger needs it to be able to cross different terrains too, so we needed to figure out how to complete the project efficiently.”

The team must utilize all the skills and knowledge they have acquired throughout their college careers, from physics and technical design concepts to project management and entrepreneurship best practices.

And through collaboration with their sponsor, faculty advisor Adjunct Professor Robert Gallo, and the challenger, the team produced a design and learned along the way.

“We are used to starting a problem knowing that we have all of the information we need, and that wasn’t the case here. It took us time to get all of the right information, and to even know what questions to be asking,” says Imtiaz.

“There were meetings where we came away feeling much less confident than when we went in,” says Alicic. “We had to go back to the drawing board a few times once new information came to light, there was definitely some trial and error.”

Nonetheless, once they figured out the details, the team pinned down a design that fits within their given budget in the fall semester. “We decided to build an electrically motorized wheelchair with a swiveling basket in the back that she can easily store her things in without adding strain,” says Alicic.

Now in the spring semester, the team is looking forward to the building and testing portion of their project, and mostly, to the final result.

“For all our classes, we put in hard work on tests and assignments, and at the end, the reward is the grade that you earn. But with this project, it is much more fulfilling since we are making a real impact on someone’s life, and we get to see the difference in her day-to-day,” says Holland.

The team is looking forward to applying the knowledge they learned on this project to their future engineering careers. “We had to work within our given parameters with people we hadn’t worked with before, which is remarkably similar to how we will complete projects in the workforce. Senior design is a great way to learn about teamwork and how to work with different stakeholders,” says Alicic.