Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Mason Competitive Cyber scores multiple wins at CyberForge 2024

Martha Bushong — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:50:37 +0000

Mason Competitive Cyber scores multiple wins at CyberForge 2024 Martha Bushong Wed, 02/14/2024 - 12:50

In This Story

The George Mason University team Mason Competitive Cyber scored first, second, and fourth place at the Cyberforge 2024 competition held on February 11-12. During the two-day conference students heard from industry professionals and enhanced their cyberskills by competing in the Capture the Flag (CTF) competition.

“Winning a Virginia-wide competition is pretty good news by itself,” said Cyber Security Engineering Department Chair Paulo Costa. “CyberForge is especially important due to the quality of the teams, the level of effort every team and associated organizations/universities put into it, and the impact it has in the Virginia cybersecurity space."

Costa consider this one of the two most important competitions in the area. The other is Virginia Military Institute’s Cyber Fusion event happening later this month on February 23-24.

The Cyberforge event featured companies such as MITRE, CCI, G2OPS, HAK5, CompTIA, Virginia Cyber Range, WiCyS, TCM Security, and more. The Mason students competed against top collegiate teams and industry professionals from around Virginia. Students value competitions as these events allow them to meet talented students and industry professionals outside their home institution.

The team won multiple different prizes, including but not limited to Canakit raspberry pi 5 kits, CompTIA vouchers, and HAK5 gift cards, but they are most proud of the winner’s plaque, which they hope to display in the department’s office.

The event was hosted by the Coastal Virginia Cybersecurity Student Association (CVCSA), Coastal Virginia Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (COVA CCI), and a local college/university's cybersecurity club.

Topics

Cybersecurity

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Mason Competitive Cyber

Students

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

Vijay Shah joins $2M NTIA-funded project on 5G cybersecurity

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 21:06:24 +0000

Vijay Shah joins $2M NTIA-funded project on 5G cybersecurity Teresa Donnellan Thu, 02/08/2024 - 16:06

George Mason University researcher Vijay Shah has joined a $2 million project to develop a system to secure 5G Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture.

Funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the project "A Holistic Cybersecurity Testing Framework for 5G Radio Access Networks" is a collaboration with Virginia Tech, Penn State University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Shah, who leads Mason’s NextG Wireless Lab, will be allocated nearly a quarter of the project’s budget and be working with Nishith Tripathi and Jeff Reed from Virginia Tech, Syed Rafiul Hussain from Penn State University, and Bo Tang from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Vijay Shah

Security vulnerabilities in O-RAN present a critical cybersecurity challenge in the era of 5G. The team aims to create “a holistic and automated cybersecurity testing framework for O-RAN,” per the project’s executive summary.

Shah will also receive funding from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) to investigate fingerprinting technology for 5G/NextG O-RAN supply chain risk management, additional funding that highlights the multifaceted approach taken by the NextG Wireless Lab to address 5G networks cybersecurity challenges.

As part of these initiatives, the NextG Wireless Lab is actively growing its research team, with opportunities for postdoctoral researchers and PhD students interested in O-RAN cybersecurity, testing, and supply chain management.

Those interested in contributing to cutting-edge research in this field should email Shah.

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Department of Cyber Security Engineering faculty

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

5G/6G Wireless Communications

Mason faculty part of $1.7 million NTIA Wireless Innovation Fund project using AI to test O-RAN components

Teresa Donnellan — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 19:17:21 +0000

Mason faculty part of $1.7 million NTIA Wireless Innovation Fund project using AI to test O-RAN components Teresa Donnellan Tue, 12/12/2023 - 14:17

In This Story

Kai Zeng

Two College of Engineering and Computing faculty members are part of a project awarded $1.7 million by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. Kai Zeng, a professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, and Vijay K. Shah, an assistant professor in the cyber security engineering department at George Mason University, are part of a team led by researchers from Michigan State University to test Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) components using artificial intelligence (AI).

Kai Zeng

Zeng, Shah, and their colleagues will use AI to guide the process of running hundreds of millions of test cases within complex O-RAN systems. “We can accelerate the testing process and make it automatic [with AI],” said Zeng.

The team’s testing includes three objectives: test for whether the O-RAN is secure, test the O-RAN's performance (i.e., its capacity for users in different app environments), and, finally, test for interoperability. When a system passes these myriad tests, Shah noted, “At least you can guarantee that, as long as a given environment is not very, very unique, it will work.” Supporting open and interoperable wireless networks is the aim of the NTIA’s Wireless Innovation Fund.

Inherently interoperable, O-RAN architecture is designed to comprise open and standardized interfaces for disaggregated RAN functions to lower the barrier for different vendors and third-party software developers to contribute to RAN innovation.

“It's not like the current monolithic, proprietary cellular networks,” Zeng explained. “If you purchase, say, Ericsson products, you can only use their hardware and software. But now, with the open RAN interfaces, different vendors can come into play that are just based on some generalized hardware; and they can build a lot of software applications or functions in this O-RAN architecture.” O-RAN architecture is standardized by the O-RAN Alliance, a consortium of cellular operators, large vendors, start-ups, and academic institutions.

Vijay K. Shah

Zeng’s 5G/NextG wireless expertise and Shah’s O-RAN research and development work in the NextG Wireless Lab@George Mason University positioned the pair perfectly to join this project. The project grew from Zeng’s working relationship with Michigan State and AT&T researchers, with whom he completed an earlier project funded jointly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Defense’s Securely Operating Through 5G Infrastructure program. That project developed a product called WindTexter based on generative AI. Shah’s O-RAN work began late in 2020 with seed funding from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative xG Testbed. He went on to secure a separate NSF grant, Open AI Cellular, which resulted in the development of a novel AI-driven controller to automatically control or configure O-RAN system parameters.

If the project goes well, Zeng said, the research team would like to see their hardware and software tools guide private industry in purchasing, testing, and, ultimately, adopting O-RAN.

Topics

Cybersecurity

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Department of Cyber Security Engineering faculty

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty

Artificial Intelligence

5G/6G Wireless Communications

WCC

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

Students shine at Mason’s Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Competition

Martha Bushong — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:57:47 +0000

Students shine at Mason’s Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Competition Martha Bushong Mon, 04/24/2023 - 09:57

In This Story

John Shortle

Songjun Luo

Lance Sherry

George Mason University’s Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) held its sixth annual Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Design Competition on April 17, 2023. This student-focused competition is an international assembly for the design of complex systems and a leading showcase for undergraduate design projects. These projects are from capstone design courses or from baccalaureate, honors, or design-oriented graduate theses. The event honors Andrew P. Sage, the founding dean of the Volgenau School of Engineering, a pioneer and leader in systems engineering, a prolific author, and a dedicated educator.

Event organizer Songjun Luo, associate professor from SEOR said, “The competition provided students in systems engineering and related disciplines an opportunity to showcase how they apply what they learn in solving real-world problems. As they receive feedback from judges, who are industry experts, the students learned if their solutions are practical or not. Finally, by competing with teams from other universities, they learned from each other.”

Mason teams competed with groups from UPenn, Virginia Tech, and other domestic and foreign universities. Since its inception in 2018, the competition has grown to include more teams from foreign countries. This year there were 12 international teams from four universities.

Categories included design, network security, healthcare, software security, decision support systems, device security, and transportation and logistics. Teams from the Bachelor of Science in systems engineering and cyber security engineering represented Mason at the competition.

Independent judges commented on the outstanding quality of the presentations and the skill of the student presenters and described the methodologies as top-notch.

“I’d like to thank all of the people who contributed to the success of the event,” said Luo. “It was really an effort of many people.”

The judges for reading through all the papers (~60), asking tough questions, and giving honest and constructive feedback and evaluations.

The track chairs for working through all the technical issues and ensuring the smooth running of all sessions.
Justin Amoyal, CEO and Co-Founder of Impruvon, for a very inspirational keynote speech
George Donohue for hosting a wonderful (and humorous) award ceremony.
John Shortle and Lance Sherry for their advice and guidance.
SEOR and CYSE faculty for attending the conference.
Rania and Mike (our admins.) for the around-the-clock support in the last few days, and all 260+ students for their hard work!

Mason winners from Cyber Security Engineering Tracks"The projects consider all aspects of the systems engineering design process. It is very impressive what the students accomplish in a year,” said John Shortle, SEOR department chair.

Competition Winners

Track CS 1 Offensive / Defensive Network Security

Winner - Team 2

Authors: Advay Janardhan, Ryker Gogolkiewicz, Mathew Creeks, and Hassan Al Hani

Title: Development of a Packer and Loader System for Malware Delivery.

Honorable Mention - Team 5

Authors: Celeste Huang, Chetan Kala, Faris Shaheen, Jhonn Dalton Cardozo, Mohammad Alessa and Sahil Khan

Title: OpenStack Cloud Penetration Testing.

Track CS2 Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Awards

Best paper award: Chat Application Analysis: Custom Tooling and Workflow

Team members: Sruthi Chavali, Rand Alaqeel, Mohamed Alfalasi, and Udhayvir Goraya

Honorable Mention: Mitigation Roadmap for Supply Chain Attacks

Team members: Johnathan Hy, Daniel Behrooz, Sahil Gulati, and Zain Shah

Track CS 3 Cyber-physical Systems

Best paper: Team 4, ‘Decentralized Privacy-Preservation Misbehavior Detection in Vehicular Networks Using Deep Learning’

Honorable mention: Team 2, ‘Design and Testing of a Secure Asset Tracking System’

Track CS 4 Software Security

Best paper: Team 4 (Mitigating Security Risks in the Software Supply Chain: A Continuous Inspection Framework within Azure)

Track CS 5 Hardware Security

Winner – Team 1

Authors: Casey Cho, Pacey Querubin, Michael Long, Uthra Muthukumaran, Dian Rajic, and Kelson Schira

Title: Detecting Unmanned Aircraft Systems on a Broadband Network and Long-Term Evolution

Honorable Mention – Team 3

Authors: Nathaniel Lovgren, Angelina Lee, Hashim Cheema, Brandon Avila, Jack Knobloch, and Lucas Artero

Title: Identifying Friendly Forces in the Battlefield

Track CS 6 Cyber-threat Intelligence

Best Paper Winner: Team 3

Authors: Rishi Shyamala, Luna Baral, Yonel Beaulieu, Haya Saeed, and Mosha Kamran

Title: Using Machine Learning to Perform Anomaly Detection

Honorable Mention: Team 2

Authors: Paulina Keifer, Simran Chhatwal, Hamza Aljaidi, Tashfin Hassan, Joycelyn Joo, and Nathaniel Kim

Title: ELK Stack Security Enhancement with Log Anomaly Detection and Analysis

Track SE 1 and 2 System Design

Best paper: Team 4

Design of a Portable and Renewable EV Battery Charging System (PREVBCS)

Authors: Michael Riggi, Amir Abrari, Nancy Reyes, and Jojo Taylor

Track SE 3 and 4 Industrial Applications

Most Promising Team. Team 6 for A Design of a Mason Recovery System to Meet Net Zero Pledge

Authors: Dominic Galarza, Nick Baxter, Christian Artz, and Aaron Bergantinos

Track SE 6 Software Tools and Platform

Best paper: Team 2

Authors: Joseph Privitera, Mikeal Lockard, and Ovidio Castillo

Title: Design of a Climate Related Financial Risk Tool for Non-Profits and Small Businesses

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Future at Fuse: Cyber Security Engineering

Teresa Donnellan — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 16:24:18 +0000

Future at Fuse: Cyber Security Engineering Teresa Donnellan Wed, 03/08/2023 - 11:24

In This Story

Peggy Brouse

Paulo Costa

As plans for Mason Square progress, the Cyber Security Engineering (CYSE) department, the fastest growing department in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), is eager to leverage the space. Home to the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Northern Virginia Node Cyber Living Innovation Lab, Mason Square will house CYSE’s graduate programs

“The bulk of the research that we do happens there,” says department chair Paulo Costa. “It makes sense for us to have both our master's and PhD students having more presence on that campus, and that's going to become even more important after the new building [Fuse] is available to them.”

As CEC’s youngest department and the first to offer a Bachelor of Science in cyber security engineering, CYSE is growing quickly. Associate chair and department founder Peggy S. Brouse estimates that the department gains 10 to 20 percent more students each year.

“This semester, we're graduating 158, and I think probably in the fall we'll get another 200 freshmen coming in, maybe more. I mean, it just doesn’t seem to be ending,” says Brouse.

Dedicated leadership guides the department; Costa and Brouse have known each other for 25 years, having met when Costa was a student in Brouse’s class. Brouse has worked at Mason for 32 years. She co-founded the Systems Engineering and Operations Research department and developed the Cyber Security Engineering degree program from scratch; the bachelor’s in cyber security engineering was the first degree of its kind in the world.

“I had to work with corporations and others to find out what we should offer in this degree. It's a really hard degree—It's 126 credits, and it's very quantitative—but if you can get in it, you're going to make $100,000 going out. So, I'm really proud of it,” says Brouse. Indeed, CYSE has many organizational sponsors in northern Virginia, including various private companies that support specific senior design projects as well as government organizations that support research.

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Living Innovation Lab (Pilot Lab) in Arlington Campus. Photo by: Ron Aira/Creative

The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI), for example, funds the CCI Northern Virginia Node Cyber Living Innovation Lab at Mason Square, which includes about 4,000 square feet of space dedicated to cybersecurity research, training, and experiential learning. One such cybersecurity test involves the lab's Tormach CNC machine, which carves metal objects according to a given 3D file. As the machine engraves a coin with a word, one team tries to change a single letter of the word while another tries to detect and prevent the attack. Other lab equipment includes a robot that sorts items on a conveyor belt, driving simulation systems, and a high-fidelity digital twin of the Fuse building.

In addition, the Department of Energy funds fourteen innovation institutes, each addressing a specific challenge, Costa explains. Mason Square serves as the east coast headquarters of the DoE's Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), which provides a large yearly research grant for CYSE research at Mason. Costa, the grant’s principal investigator, notes, “We've been active in the areas of manufacturing of industrial systems and also autonomous vehicles.”

Topics

Fuse at Mason Square

Mason Square

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Cyber Living Innovation Lab

Cyber Security Research

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Systems Engineering and cyber security engineering represent Mason at Andrew Sage Competition

Martha Bushong — Mon, 03 May 2021 23:29:43 +0000

Systems Engineering and cyber security engineering represent Mason at Andrew Sage Competition Martha Bushong Mon, 05/03/2021 - 19:29

Mason’s Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) held its fourth annual Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Design Competition on April 26.

This student-focused competition is an international assembly for the design of complex systems and a leading showcase for undergraduate design projects. These projects are from our capstone design courses or from baccalaureate, honors, or design-oriented graduate theses.

Our teams competed with groups from the United States Military Academy at West Point, University of Pennsylvania, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, and the College of Engineering and Computing's SEOR department. Categories included design, network security, healthcare, software security, decision support systems, device security, and transportation and logistics.

Teams from the Bachelor of Science in systems engineering and cyber security engineering represented Mason at the competition.

The event honors Andrew P. Sage, the founding dean of the Volgenau School, a pioneer and leader in systems engineering, a prolific author, and a dedicated educator.

Honorable Mentions

Upcoming Sessions (Registration opens approximately two weeks prior to each event).

Due to COVID-19 all information sessions and VSE hosted graduate admission events will be held virtually until further notice. For questions regarding graduate programs and the admissions process, please contact our office at vsegadm@gmu.edu.

Session Type	Date	RSVP	Location	Start Time	End Time
Information Session (Prospective Students)	Sat, Feb 6, 2021	Event Passed	Zoom	10 a.m.	10:45 a.m.
Information Session (Prospective Students)	Wed, Mar 10, 2021	Event Passed	Zoom	10 a.m.	10:45 a.m.
Information Session (Prospective Students)	Mon, April 19, 2021	Event Passed	Zoom	12 p.m.	12:45 p.m.
Information Session (Prospective Students)	Wed, May 19, 2021	RSVP	Zoom	10:00 a.m.	10:45 a.m.
Information Session (Prospective Students)	Wed, Jun 30, 2021	TBA	Zoom	6:00 p.m.	6:45 p.m.
Information Session (Prospective Students)	Fri, July 9, 2021	TBA	Zoom	9:00 a.m.	9:45 a.m.

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Secure manufacturing saves energy and protects businesses

Martha Bushong — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 16:36:05 +0000

Secure manufacturing saves energy and protects businesses Martha Bushong Thu, 04/15/2021 - 12:36

In This Story

Paulo Costa

Duminda Wijesekera

Paulo Costa (on right) with his team in the RARE Lab.

Cybersecurity experts from Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing are playing an important role in protecting American manufacturing automation and supply chains from cyber threats and designing better security into advanced manufacturing plants.

Through its membership with the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII, pronounced sī-man-ē), researchers will focus on developing an integrated cybersecurity architecture and achieving significant energy efficiencies in manufacturing.

The institute is led by the University of Texas at San Antonio and has an initial 5-year budget of $111 million, including $70 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The remaining budget is comprised of cost-sharing, member contributions, and other factors that together will ensure the self-sustainability of CyManII after this initial period.

As a managing member, Mason is overseeing and operating CyManII’s East Coast headquarters on the Arlington Campus. The headquarters will house the institute’s primary offices, meeting space, and training facilities for the National Capital Region.

“The Arlington facility will house lab space and equipment to demonstrate, test, and validate CyManII’s emerging cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing technologies and products,” says Associate Professor and Vice President for Securing Automation and Supply Chain Paulo Costa. “Our proximity to the Department of Energy and Washington, D.C. will be useful to visitors when we return to in-person meetings and events.”

The 13,000-square-foot facility supports robotic platforms that evaluate security vulnerabilities, the impact of 5G on autonomous vehicles, the power grid, smart buildings and cities, and smart manufacturing. The space will also host a robotic smart manufacturing testbed and provide meeting and temporary office space for visiting researchers and staff.

Other benefits of filling the role of managing partner include representation on the governance board for leadership on strategic directions, planning, prioritization, and key programming.

Mason will participate in road mapping efforts and strategic decisions about investments, technical focus, and projects. Mason faculty will also gain complimentary access to CyManII events, tech showcases and meetings, and participate in annual RFP competition with extensive outreach promoting completed projects/technologies.

Mason researchers from the College of Engineering and Computing, who are setting up the lab, are playing key roles in CyManII’s first-year projects, finding ways to protect manufacturing automation and supply chains from cyber threats, and designing better security into advanced manufacturing plants.

In one of the projects, Professor Duminda Wijesekera, CyManII’s Coordinated Vulnerability Awareness Lead, is working with Bo Yu, research assistant professor, and Matt Jablonski, a PhD candidate and research assistant, to study Smart Manufacturing Architecture (SMA).

SMA has the potential to make American manufacturing more productive, more energy-efficient, more competitive, and verifiably correct. “We hope our research in Smart Manufacturing Architecture provides the backbone for modeling that will speed up the adoption of these technologies and processes and help companies to create new, secure, integrated systems,” says Jablonski. “We know that the sooner we can identify risks, the better we can help manufacturers mitigate the risks.”

The team’s work addresses potential methods for formally analyzing safety and security risks in Automated Manufacturing Systems. They emphasize how to identify components and the communication interfaces and components that can be modeled using formal methods.

Recently the team used an automated manufacturing system that produces aluminum cans to show how these processes are modeled using a suite of formal methods that included Linear Time propositional Temporal Logic, Architecture Analysis, and Design Language, as well as fault and attack tree analysis.

“This work is some of the most exciting work I’ve ever done,” says Yu. “The real-world application of this knowledge has tremendous impact. This modeling and what it does can protect the reputation of a business by finding weaknesses early on.”

As CyManII’s work becomes more established, the research enterprise will expand and grow into additional areas, such as other cyber-physical systems that directly control physical processes such as machinery, vehicles, cranes, and other movable infrastructure.

“Formal guarantees are needed in secure manufacturing automation because, in their absence, there is no acceptable way to guarantee against failures that occur due to malice and natural faults,” says Wijesekera. “These failures can affect the operational safety of machinery, operators, and the equipment that uses manufactured parts, resulting in wasted material and energy.”

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Research

CyManII

Mason Momentum

Mason Engineering BS in cyber security engineering earns ABET accreditation

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 14:45:18 +0000

Mason Engineering BS in cyber security engineering earns ABET accreditation Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/19/2021 - 09:45

Mason Engineering’s bachelor’s degree program in cyber security engineering has been accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, the global accreditor of college and university programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology.  

ABET accreditation assures that programs meet standards to produce graduates ready to enter critical technical fields that are leading the way in innovation and emerging technologies and anticipating the welfare and safety needs of the public.

“ABET accreditation is important to all engineering programs. The BS in cyber security engineering being the first ABET-accredited cyber security engineering program, and the first accredited with the new cyber security program criteria, is an important achievement for the new Volgenau Department of Cyber Security Engineering, but it is only the beginning,” says Peggy Brouse, professor and associate chair for the department. “The department is launching the new MS CYSE degree this spring semester. In addition, we are in a great position to extend research that we already have with the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. We are excited for the future.”

Students pursuing a BS in cybersecurity engineering learn from distinguished faculty in the classroom and gain hands-on experience through projects and a year-long senior design capstone where faculty, students, and even alumni come together to tackle real-world problems.

Alumnus turned senior design capstone advisor Matthew Wilkes, BS cyber security engineering ’18, says of the students he has mentored, “I want to ensure they’re encouraged to be successful in both their project and beyond. I won’t make it easy for them because if it was easy every student could do it.” Wilkes was among the first students to graduate from the program.

“Any student who graduates from Mason with a degree in cyber security engineering has very high expectations,” says Wilkes.

Students praise the program and the opportunities that Mason offers. “Mason’s cybersecurity program has helped me build a solid base of practice and theory to fuel extracurricular study,” says cyber security engineering student Zaine Wilson. “Professors Tom Winston, Jim Jones, Mohamed Gebril, and all the other professors in the department, you won't find a group of more caring, inspiring, and wise mentors anywhere else.”

ABET’s voluntary peer-review process is highly respected because it adds critical value to academic programs in the technical disciplines, where quality, precision, and safety are of the utmost importance.

Topics

Cyber Security

Cybersecurity

Accreditation

Department of Cyber Security Engineering