5G

Message manipulation tricks text thieves

Tama Moni — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 16:30:26 +0000

Message manipulation tricks text thieves Tama Moni Mon, 12/12/2022 - 11:30

In This Story

Photo courtesy of iStock images

When you send a text, you have a reasonable expectation that your transmission is secure. But what if it was intercepted by a malicious actor? Perhaps a holiday recipe gets pilfered or an unflattering picture is in rogue hands. In scarier scenarios, you may have valuable personal information stolen.

It is this sort of worst-case scenario that concerns officials when they consider the security of texts between entities like the police, military, and intelligence agents. If mission-critical information gets stolen or blocked, the consequences can be considerable.

Researchers at ��AV’s College of Engineering and Computing are partnering with Ericsson, AT&T, Michigan State University, and Morgan State University on what they’re calling Windtexter, after the famous Navajo code talkers (also called “windtalkers”) who aided the United States’ war effort in World War II. Windtexter’s covertness trick is making important texts look like mundane messages, hiding amidst throngs of others. The project is co-funded by the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator and the Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

One thing Mason’s researchers are looking at is using natural language processing to confuse an interceptor by sending some messages that serve as red herrings, allowing the critical, relevant messages to hide in plain sight. Brian Mark, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and a researcher on the project, notes, “Hiding information in text is not that simple – the so-called cover text has to be, for example, grammatically correct, such that an eavesdropper wouldn’t be able to tell it came from some automated device.” The critical texts will also hide among countless consumer messages flying around cyberspace.

What the project is doing goes beyond encryption, Mark continues. “Encryption makes it hard for the eavesdropper to find out what the message is, but covertness means the eavesdropper wouldn’t even know you’re sending anything of importance.”

In addition, the researchers are looking at ways to avoid bad actors altogether. Kai Zeng, an associate professor in Mason’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, says that the military, for example, may use something called a VPN tunnel – an encrypted link between a computer or mobile device and an outside network – for securing messages. But a savvy attacker can sit in the middle of that “tunnel” and according to Zeng, “Even if they can’t decode the message, they can block the transmission, causing a denial of service.”

Using a device from Ericsson that supports multiple SIM cards and connecting to various carrier networks, the data traffic can be distributed among numerous paths; even if one path is jammed by a malicious actor, other paths can provide a clear route for the communication and the critical message can still be recovered.

In addition to the technical work, the team will conduct interviews with at least 12 stakeholders, getting input to guide their research and development. On the list are a Washington, DC police officer, an FBI agent, and someone from the National Security Agency, among others.

NSF and DoD are funding this project in part to take advantage of augmentations to 5G infrastructure so that military, government, and critical infrastructure operators can operate through public 5G networks whenever possible, but only if they can do so securely.

Part of the project involves a socio-economic impact analysis of the proposed techniques, overseen by Ed Oughton, assistant professor in the Mason College of Science. Following the initial goal of technical improvements to help government and service providers prioritize which techniques should receive enhanced resources, the project encourages vendors, operators, and standards bodies to adopt and distribute new security features based on benefit-cost merits.

The team is in Phase 1 of the project, along with 15 other teams. A the end of phase 1, the team will submit a phase 2 proposal and participate in a formal pitch. A small number of those teams will advance to Phase 2, which includes an award of up to $5 million for two years. The Mason team will find out if they are chosen to advance in August 2023.

For more information about WindTexter, visit this site.

Topics

College of Engineering and Computing

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

Mason partners with COMSovereign and Widelity to advance 5G innovation

John Hollis — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 16:14:32 +0000

Mason partners with COMSovereign and Widelity to advance 5G innovation John Hollis Wed, 09/15/2021 - 12:14

In June 2021, officials from COMSovereign and Widelity visited Mason’s Cyber Living Innovation Lab following their major equipment donations to increase the lab capabilities.(Editor's note: Masks were not required indoors on Mason campuses at this point in time.) Photo by Shelby Burgess/Strategic Communications

For Duminda Wijesekera, ��AV’s work in cybersecurity of 5G is critical to helping create the 5G-enabling applications that are already propelling businesses, communities and higher education.

“Wireless networking technology has become an important underpinning of the modern world, without which commerce and nearly every other facet of day-to-day life as we know it would be disrupted and even halted,” said Wijesekera, a professor in Mason’s Department of Computer Science and the acting chair of the Department of Cyber Security Engineering.

That is why the Mason’s partnership with COMSovereign Holding Corp. and Widelity Inc. is so significant.

The joint collaboration aims to research and build 5G-enabling applications and technologies to create new business, community, and higher education engagements and builds on Mason’s work in 5G and the ecosystem of university, industry and government partners collaborating through the Northern Virginia Node of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI).

The cybersecurity of 5G has been a focus area for CCI since its inception in 2019.

“CCI has been a catalyst for connecting industry and government cybersecurity challenges with university faculty with expertise, innovative technologies, and solutions,” said Liza Wilson Durant, Mason’s associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement and the director of the Northern Virginia Node of CCI. “University-industry partnerships such as this one accelerate delivery of new solutions to the innovation ecosystem.”

Through the partnership, Mason will provide research and development and concept development of 5G applications, such as connected transport and smart infrastructure.

COMSovereign will support the research by providing stand-alone 5G wireless network hardware and related support services that include a complete, turnkey 5G network featuring a 3GPP standardized, 5G Core (5GCN), and 5G gNodeB base station.

Widelity will contribute business and engineering services in technology strategy, research and development, network design, lab testing and integration, and network deployment. The collaboration is expected to accelerate advances in cybersecurity of 5G and implementation of 5G in smart communities, which will support the growing innovation ecosystem in the region.

Dustin McIntire, the chief technology officer of COMSovereign, said his company was pleased to partner with Mason and Widelity on the cutting-edge 5G smart-campus program.

“Our mission remains focused on unlocking the true potential of 5G through the development and commercialization of advanced, American-made wireless infrastructure,” McIntire said. “By leveraging the proven integration capabilities of Widelity with the research capabilities of the Mason team, we believe that not only will we be able to advance 5G technology, but we will greatly expand the potential use cases of this technology for customers across both government and commercial sectors.”

Parag Singh, the managing director at Widelity, called the joint effort “an organized digital innovation partnership bringing technology, academia, and integration components to solve complex problems together.”

“We believe that 5G/Cyber accelerator program with Mason and COMSovereign will create an organic entrepreneurial ecosystem and serve the regional economy via next-gen research expansion and growth in STEM talent,” Singh said.

Topics

Campus News

5G/6G Wireless Communications

College of Engineering and Computing

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Cyber Living Innovation Lab

Research

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.

5G

Message manipulation tricks text thieves

In This Story

Topics

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

Cybersecurity at Mason

Related News

Topics

Mason partners with COMSovereign and Widelity to advance 5G innovation

Topics

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

Topics

In This Story