Cyber Security Research

Firefighters get an assist from 5G-equipped drones developed at Mason

Tama Moni — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 20:34:23 +0000

Firefighters get an assist from 5G-equipped drones developed at Mason Tama Moni Tue, 10/18/2022 - 16:34

A team of firefighters ascend the stairs in a high-rise engulfed in flames. The team disperses to put out the fire and search for survivors. Drones hover around the burning building and identify with pinpoint accuracy the location of each firefighter, who is wearing a sensor, sending this information back to a commander who has an “eye in the sky” vantage point.

The commander communicates with the firefighters, directing their movements, keeping them safe, and helping them extinguish the flames. If one member of the team hasn’t moved in several minutes, the system sends an alert to check on that person’s status.

Photo by iStock

You can imagine this scenario in a big-budget movie, but Vijay Shah, an assistant professor in the Cyber Security Engineering Department in the College of Engineering and Computing at ��AV is working to make it a reality. If all goes well, firefighters will have a new, important tool like this within five years.

Funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Shah is collaborating with colleagues at Virginia Tech and the Arlington, Virginia, County Fire Department on a 5G Indoor Positioning System that may someday be used by fire departments nationwide. Firefighters in Arlington will be testing the technology in a facility starting in 2025.

Advances in 5G network technology allow for this research because compared to other legacy wireless communications, 5G provides much greater accuracy and does not rely on equipment within the building, which may be damaged during a fire. A key development Shah and colleagues are exploiting is called “network slicing,” sending certain pieces of information over portions of the 5G network.

“The critical information, such as location of the firefighter, is sent in one ‘slice’ and in a much smaller packet, allowing for virtually no delay in information relay," says Shah. "Transmitting audio/video information requires more data, but any information lost there simply reduces the quality of the audio/video, which is not as important as losing someone’s location. That information would be put in another slice.”

Shah notes that 5G has key capabilities, such as support for various timing and angle-based techniques, device-to-device communication, and edge computing, which can be leveraged to locate users precisely and enable reliable communication infrastructure. Together this allows for much greater situational awareness of firefighters—and victims—by knowing their precise location and allowing for seamless communication among the firefighting team.

The drones add another level of complexity, and at least three will be needed around a building to guarantee high levels of accuracy. The team is working to ensure drone communications are synchronized precisely, as even delays as short as milliseconds may result in improper readings. Shah says that getting the independently flying drones synced up is one of the project’s biggest challenges.

Cybersecurity at Mason

Topics

firefighters

Drones

College of Engineering and Computing

Cyber Security Research

5G/6G Wireless Communications

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Health Informatics Student Develops 5G-Enabled Telemedicine Technology

John Brandon Cantrell — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 21:44:11 +0000

Health Informatics Student Develops 5G-Enabled Telemedicine Technology John Brandon C… Wed, 12/01/2021 - 16:44

Topics

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

internships

Cyber Security Research

Tech Talent Investment Program

CPH Experience

Patricia Tran integrates innovation and clinical experience as summer intern with Commonwealth Cyber Initiative

Tran's research as a CCI intern allowed her to create 5G-enabled wearable technology to detect Atrial fibrillation and support clinical decision making.

Patricia Tran, an alumna of Mason's Honors College, recognized the essential roles cybersecurity and health informatics have in health care while working as a nurse. Tran’s first-hand experience with electronic health record (EHR) systems sparked her interest in how new technology could enhance health care organizations’ telemedicine services. She is now pursuing a Master of Science in Health Informatics at Mason, where she integrates her passion for health care and technology to defeat digital threats that compromise the access and quality of care patients receive.

“In a field where every second matters, high latency and poor connectivity can have detrimental effects,” says Tran, who is interested in the way 5G-enabled technology can improve the telemedicine infrastructure. “5G has the potential to address these challenges and transform telemedicine.”

Tran pursued her interest in 5G during the summer of 2021 as one of the first summer interns at Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI). CCI is a Virginia organization with a mission to establish the state as a global leader in cybersecurity while supporting world-class research and preparing future generations for careers in cybersecurity.

“Throughout the summer, we developed a proof-of-concept design for 5G-enabled telemedicine, incorporating RaspberryPi, Apple Watch health data, cloud computing, and OpenEMR to detect Atrial fibrillation and support clinical decision making in real-time,” says Tran.

Developers could also expand Tran’s research on wearable device technology to detect other ailments--a result of her passion for creating innovative, amendable solutions to enhance the quality-of-care patients receive.

Tran and her research team discovered that the current telemedicine infrastructure is not fully-equipped to handle the nuances of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, which are devices that connect to cloud services to access information. She believes that her 5G-enabled technology research can help overcome these obstacles by providing stronger connectivity, enhanced security, and faster speeds to telemedicine technology.

“In health care, 5G is still a relatively new technology and could have tremendous impacts on telemedicine and care delivery, so our research addresses these opportunities for advancement as well as challenges that may arise,” says Tran.

Tran’s clinical background as a nurse, coursework knowledge from her program, and strong work ethic helped her succeed throughout the internship. The many skills she gained throughout the health informatics program, such as database management, data analysis, and programming, allowed her to successfully work with real-world applications in health care.

The CCI internship inspired Tran to encourage other students to pursue research initiatives that interest them. “Research in general can be overwhelming at times, but with the right attitude, you might be surprised at how much you can learn and discover,” says Tran.

Tran aims to work with a leading EHR system as a developer or analyst after graduating with her master’s degree in health informatics to continue discovering innovative ways to address health care technological problems.

University researchers receive grants from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative for cyber and arts and design research

Martha Bushong — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:08:24 +0000

University researchers receive grants from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative for cyber and arts and design research Martha Bushong Wed, 02/03/2021 - 16:08

In This Story

Liza Wilson Durant

Duminda Wijesekera

Kai Zeng

Six research projects led by ��AV (Mason) faculty and one research project led by James Madison University (JMU) faculty received funding from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) that will help further the expansion of autonomous systems, AI, 5G applications, and new approaches to security.

“These projects promise to impact the security of our infrastructure as well as the manufacturing enterprise and leverage expertise in AI, policy and economics to support security of our regional ecosystem. Our multidisciplinary, multi-institutional approach to these challenges will accelerate new defenses and strategies," said Liza Wilson Durant, CCI Northern Virginia Node Director.

Mason faculty also received funding as part of the CCI Building Bridges Arts and Design Collaboration Program that aims to engage the Virginia community of cyber researchers in arts and design to reimagine and depict the results of cybersecurity research either for scientific or creative arts purposes.

"It is exciting to fund projects which collide art and design with engineering and computing,” said Durant, associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engagement at Mason. “The artists' perspective will surely broaden our understanding of the data and inspire us to be more creative and shift perspective as we seek solutions to our technical challenges."

"The portfolio of research initiatives funded in the Northern Virginia Node brings together the unique expertise of multiple nodes across the commonwealth to advance the goals of the CCI Northern Virginia Node's strategic plan,” said Luiz DaSilva, CCI executive director.

Topics

Cybersecurity

Cyber Security Research

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Researchers receive over $1.5 million from DARPA to optimize security and energy tradeoff

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 17:47:20 +0000

Researchers receive over $1.5 million from DARPA to optimize security and energy tradeoff Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/02/2021 - 12:47

Topics

Cyber Security Research

Cybersecurity

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

In This Story

Brian Mark

Khaled Khasawneh

Kai Zeng

Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao

Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao, Kai Zeng, Khaled Khasawneh, and Brian Mark are collaborating with researchers at Virginia Tech to optimize the safety and energy-efficient tradeoff.

The capabilities and reach of 5G are expanding, but with new capabilities come new security challenges. Four Mason Engineering researchers received a $1.6 million grant from DARPA to tackle one of the many security issues that 5G poses as part of a larger DARPA initiative called Open, Programmable, Secure 5G (OPS-5G).

The grant, entitled EPIC SWaPD: Energy Preserving Internet of Things (IoT) Cryptography for Small Weight and Power Devices, aims to optimize the security and energy efficiency tradeoff by creating a low-energy security architecture for various types of IoT devices.

“In a network, there are many different devices of different sizes and capabilities. Many of these devices don’t have much computing power or battery life, and a common cybersecurity attack on these devices is to drain their battery life,” says Brian Mark, co-principal investigator on the grant.

Mark, Khaled Khasawneh, Kai Zeng, and Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are collaborating with the company Kryptowire and Assistant Professor Matthew Hicks from Virginia Tech for the project.

These small IoT devices could be as simple as a thermometer or humidity sensor that is part of a larger smart home system. “These sensors can be very tiny, and they have limited computation and communication capabilities. The first step for each of these types of sensors would be to bootstrap, or link, a secure connection to the network, which requires authentication without pre-shared secrets. This is where the vulnerabilities lie,” says Kai Zeng.

When sensors or other types of small IoT devices must automatically authenticate themselves, attackers have many paths of attack. They can drain the device's battery, rendering it useless, or steal sensitive information or data from the device. Because of the many pathways that attackers could use to harm these devices, the team is combining cryptography, network protocol design, and machine learning to assure the success and scalability of their efforts.

“Something really important for this effort is that the security architecture operates on the principles of zero trust and least privilege,” says Mark. “Zero trust means that when a device comes in and wants to join the network, the assumption is that there is no prior trust or information shared between the devices, while least privilege implies the minimum permissions are granted to the entity to perform its task. So, we needed to bootstrap the security association and grant an entity just enough authority to access the devices or data that it needs but no more than that.”

One way they are looking at securing the connection is through gait-inspired authentication, which leverages the kinetic energy generated by a human user. “Every device harvests energy in a different way, and we use the harvesting pattern for authentication of the device, which preserves energy and accomplishes a security task at the same time,” says Dinakarrao.

Another approach is to exploit the “always-on” sensors in some devices like smartphones. “We plan to employ always-on sensing to perform the exchange of device identification and cryptographic material,” says Khasawneh.

They are also using machine learning to ensure both authentication and authorization of different devices. “We not only have to authenticate the devices and entities that are allowed on a network, but we have to verify their different roles and privileges. I might be granted access to the information that tells me the temperature of a room, but perhaps I might not have the authorization to change the thermostat setting,” says Mark. “Using graph-based models, we can verify the trust relationships of different devices or entities and this process can be accelerated using machine learning techniques,” adds Dinakarrao.

Long-term, the team aspires for their security architecture to easily be applied to other devices. “When we talk about the energy and security tradeoff, we have to think about how we can do things in a smart way to conserve energy while enhancing security. But we also need to think about how to make our architecture scalable to larger, more geographically distributed networks. Right now, this work is with smaller devices, but the hope is that our overall security architecture can apply to a variety of devices with different capabilities,” says Mark.