Biblio

Security is a critical aspect in the process of designing, developing, and testing software systems. Due to the increasing need for security-related skills within software systems, there is a growing demand for these skills to be taught in computer science. A series of security modules was developed not only to meet the demand but also to assess the impact of these modules on teaching critical cyber security topics in computer science courses. This full paper in the innovative practice category presents the outcomes of six security modules in a freshman-level course at two institutions. The study adopts a Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA) as a project for students to demonstrate an understanding of the security concepts. Two experimental studies were conducted: 1) Teaching effectiveness of implementing cyber security modules and MEA project, 2) Students’ experiences in conceptual modeling tasks in problem-solving. In measuring the effectiveness of teaching security concepts with the MEA project, students’ performance, attitudes, and interests as well as the instructor’s effectiveness were assessed. For the conceptual modeling tasks in problem-solving, the results of student outcomes were analyzed. After implementing the security modules with the MEA project, students showed a great understanding of cyber security concepts and an increased interest in broader computer science concepts. The instructor’s beliefs about teaching, learning, and assessment shifted from teacher-centered to student-centered during their experience with the security modules and MEA project. Although 64.29% of students’ solutions do not seem suitable for real-world implementation, 76.9% of the developed solutions showed a sufficient degree of creativity.

Insider attacks is a well-known problem acknowledged as a threat as early as 1980s. The threat is attributed to legitimate users who take advantage of familiarity with the computational environment and abuse their privileges, can easily cause significant damage or losses. In this paper, we present an active defense model and framework of insider threat detection and sense. Firstly, we describe the hierarchical framework which deal with insider threat from several aspects, and subsequently, show a hierarchy-mapping based insider threats model, the kernel of the threats detection, sense and prediction. The experiments show that the model and framework could sense the insider threat in real-time effectively.

Learning programming language of Java is a basic part of the Computer Science and Engineering curriculum. Specific Java compiler is a requirement for writing and convert the writing code to executable format. However, some local installed Java compiler is suffering from compatibility, portability and storage space issues. These issues sometimes affect student-learning interest and slow down the learning process. This paper is directed toward the solution for such problems, which offers a new programming assignment submission system with cloud-based Java compiler and is known as CheckMyCode. Leveraging cloud-computing technology in terms of its availability, prevalence and affordability, CheckMyCode implements Java cloud-based programming compiler as a part of the assignment management system. CheckMyCode system is a cloud-based system that allows both main users, which are a lecturer and student to access the system via a browser on PC or smart devices. Modules of submission assignment system with cloud compiler allow lecturer and student to manage Java programming task in one platform. A framework, system module, main user and feature of CheckMyCode are presented. Also, taking into account are the future study/direction and new enhancement of CheckMyCode.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is an often-occurring major attack that developers should consider when developing web applications. We develop a system that can provide practical exercises for learning how to create web applications that are secure against XSS. Our system utilizes free software and virtual machines, allowing low-cost, safe, and practical exercises. By using two virtual machines as the web server and the attacker host, the learner can conduct exercises demonstrating both XSS countermeasures and XSS attacks. In our system, learners use a web browser to learn and perform exercises related to XSS. Experimental evaluations confirm that the proposed system can support learning of XSS countermeasures.

This is a full paper for innovate practice. Building a private cloud or using a public cloud is now feasible at many institutions. This paper presents the innovative design of cloudbased labs and programming assignments for a networking course and a cybersecurity course, and our experiences of innovatively using the private cloud at our institution to support these learning activities. It is shown by the instructor's observations and student survey data that our approach benefits learning and teaching. This approach makes it possible and secure to develop some learning activities that otherwise would not be allowed on physical servers. It enables the instructor to support students' desire of developing programs in their preferred programming languages. It allows students to debug and test their programs on the same platform to be used by the instructor for testing and grading. The instructor does not need to spend extra time administrating the computing environments. A majority (88% or more) of the students agree that working on those learning activities in the private cloud not only helps them achieve the course learning objectives, but also prepares them for their future careers.

This innovative practice paper considers the heightening awareness of the need for cybersecurity programs in light of several well publicized cyber-attacks in recent years. An examination of the academic job market reveals that a significant number of institutions are looking to hire new faculty in the area of cybersecurity. Additionally, a growing number of universities are starting to offer courses, certifications and degrees in cybersecurity. Other recent activity includes the development of a model cybersecurity curriculum and the creation of a program accreditation criteria for cybersecurity through ABET. This sudden and significant growth in demand for cybersecurity expertise has some similarities to the significant demand for networking faculty that Computer Science programs experienced in the late 1980s as a result of the rise of the Internet. This paper examines the resources necessary to respond to the demand for cybersecurity courses and programs and draws some parallels and distinctions to the demand for networking faculty over 25 years ago. Faculty and administration are faced with a plethora of questions to answer as they approach this problem: What degree and courses to offer, what certifications to consider, which curriculum to incorporate and how to deliver the material (online, faceto-face, or something in-between)? However, the most pressing question in today's fiscal climate in higher education is: what resources will it take to deliver a cybersecurity program?

This Innovate Practice full paper presents a cloud-based personalized learning lab platform. Personalized learning is gaining popularity in online computer science education due to its characteristics of pacing the learning progress and adapting the instructional approach to each individual learner from a diverse background. Among various instructional methods in computer science education, hands-on labs have unique requirements of understanding learner's behavior and assessing learner's performance for personalization. However, it is rarely addressed in existing research. In this paper, we propose a personalized learning platform called ThoTh Lab specifically designed for computer science hands-on labs in a cloud environment. ThoTh Lab can identify the learning style from student activities and adapt learning material accordingly. With the awareness of student learning styles, instructors are able to use techniques more suitable for the specific student, and hence, improve the speed and quality of the learning process. With that in mind, ThoTh Lab also provides student performance prediction, which allows the instructors to change the learning progress and take other measurements to help the students timely. For example, instructors may provide more detailed instructions to help slow starters, while assigning more challenging labs to those quick learners in the same class. To evaluate ThoTh Lab, we conducted an experiment and collected data from an upper-division cybersecurity class for undergraduate students at Arizona State University in the US. The results show that ThoTh Lab can identify learning style with reasonable accuracy. By leveraging the personalized lab platform for a senior level cybersecurity course, our lab-use study also shows that the presented solution improves students engagement with better understanding of lab assignments, spending more effort on hands-on projects, and thus greatly enhancing learning outcomes.

This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper makes the case for using concept inventories in cybersecurity education and presents an example of the development of a concept inventory in the field of secure programming. The secure programming concept inventory is being developed by a team of researchers from four universities. We used a Delphi study to define the content area to be covered by the concept inventory. Participants in the Delphi study included ten experts from academia, government, and industry. Based on the results, we constructed a concept map of secure programming concepts. We then compared this concept map to the Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education Curriculum 2017 guidelines to ensure complete coverage of secure programming concepts. Our mapping indicates a substantial match between the concept map and those guidelines.

Training the future cybersecurity workforce to respond to emerging threats requires introduction of novel educational interventions into the cybersecurity curriculum. To be effective, these interventions have to incorporate trending knowledge from cybersecurity and other related domains while allowing for experiential learning through hands-on experimentation. To date, the traditional interdisciplinary approach for cybersecurity training has infused political science, law, economics or linguistics knowledge into the cybersecurity curriculum, allowing for limited experimentation. Cybersecurity students were left with little opportunity to acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities in domains outside of these. Also, students in outside majors had no options to get into cybersecurity. With this in mind, we developed an interdisciplinary course for experiential learning in the fields of cybersecurity and interaction design. The inaugural course teaches students from cybersecurity, user interaction design, and visual design the principles of designing for secure use - or secure design - and allows them to apply them for prototyping of Internet-of-Things (IoT) products for smart homes. This paper elaborates on the concepts of secure design and how our approach enhances the training of the future cybersecurity workforce.

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents a new methodology in cybersecurity education. In the context of the cybersecurity profession, the `isolation problem' refers to the observed isolation of different knowledge units, as well as the isolation of technical and business perspectives. Due to limitations in existing cybersecurity education, professionals entering the field are often trapped in microscopic perspectives, and struggle to extend their findings to grasp the big picture in a target network scenario. Guided by a previous developed and published framework named “cross-layer situation knowledge reference model” (SKRM), which delivers comprehensive level big picture situation awareness, our new methodology targets at developing suites of teaching modules to address the above issues. The modules, featuring interactive hands-on labs that emulate real-world multiple-step attacks, will help students form a knowledge network instead of isolated conceptual knowledge units. Students will not just be required to leverage various techniques/tools to analyze breakpoints and complete individual modules; they will be required to connect logically the outputs of these techniques/tools to infer the ground truth and gain big picture awareness of the cyber situation. The modules will be able to be used separately or as a whole in a typical network security course.

This Innovate Practice Work in Progress paper is about education on Cybersecurity, which is essential in training of innovative talents in the era of the Internet. Besides knowledge and skills, it is important as well to enhance the students' awareness of cybersecurity in daily life. Considering that contactless smart cards are common and widely used in various areas, one basic and two advanced contactless smart card experiments were designed innovatively and assigned to junior students in 3-people groups in an introductory cybersecurity summer course. The experimental principles, facilities, contents and arrangement are introduced successively. Classroom tests were managed before and after the experiments, and a box and whisker plot is used to describe the distributions of the scores in both tests. The experimental output and student feedback implied the learning objectives were achieved through the problem-based, active and group learning experience during the experiments.

This Research Work in Progress paper presents a study on improving student learning performance in a virtual hands-on lab system in cybersecurity education. As the demand for cybersecurity-trained professionals rapidly increasing, virtual hands-on lab systems have been introduced into cybersecurity education as a tool to enhance students' learning. To improve learning in a virtual hands-on lab system, instructors need to understand: what learning activities are associated with students' learning performance in this system? What relationship exists between different learning activities? What instructors can do to improve learning outcomes in this system? However, few of these questions has been studied for using virtual hands-on lab in cybersecurity education. In this research, we present our recent findings by identifying that two learning activities are positively associated with students' learning performance. Notably, the learning activity of reading lab materials (p \textbackslashtextless; 0:01) plays a more significant role in hands-on learning than the learning activity of working on lab tasks (p \textbackslashtextless; 0:05) in cybersecurity education.In addition, a student, who spends longer time on reading lab materials, may work longer time on lab tasks (p \textbackslashtextless; 0:01).

The search for alternative delivery modes to teaching has been one of the pressing concerns of numerous educational institutions. One key innovation to improve teaching and learning is e-learning which has undergone enormous improvements. From its focus on text-based environment, it has evolved into Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) which provide more stimulating and immersive experiences among learners and educators. An example of VLEs is the virtual world which is an emerging educational platform among universities worldwide. One very interesting topic that can be taught using the virtual world is cybersecurity. Simulating cybersecurity in the virtual world may give a realistic experience to students which can be hardly achieved by classroom teaching. To date, there are quite a number of studies focused on cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity behavior. But none has focused looking into the effect of digital simulation in the virtual world, as a new educational platform, in the cybersecurity attitude of the students. It is in this regard that this study has been conducted by designing simulation in the virtual world lessons that teaches the five aspects of cybersecurity namely; malware, phishing, social engineering, password usage and online scam, which are the most common cybersecurity issues. The study sought to examine the effect of this digital simulation design in the cybersecurity knowledge and attitude of the students. The result of the study ascertains that students exposed under simulation in the virtual world have a greater positive change in cybersecurity knowledge and attitude than their counterparts.

In this paper, we propose a cybersecurity exercise system in a virtual computer environment. The human resource development for security fields is an urgent issue because of the threat of cyber-attacks, recently, is increasing, many incidents occurring, but there is a not enough security personnel to respond. Some universities and companies are conducting education using a commercial training system on the market. However, built and operates the training system is expensive, therefore difficult to use in higher education institutions and SMEs. However, to build and operates, the training system needs high cost, thus difficult to use in higher education institutions and SMEs. For this reason, we developed the CyExec: a cybersecurity exercise system consisting of a virtual computer environment using VirtualBox and Docker. We also implemented the WebGoat that is an OSS vulnerability diagnosis and learning program on the CyExec and developed an attack and defense exercise program.

This Innovate Practice Full Paper describes our experience with teaching cybersecurity topics using guided inquiry collaborative learning. The goal is to not only develop the students' in-depth technical knowledge, but also “soft skills” such as communication, attitude, team work, networking, problem-solving and critical thinking. This paper reports our experience with developing and using the Guided Inquiry Collaborative Learning materials on the topics of firewall and IPsec. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted to access the effectiveness of the developed materials and teaching methods in terms of learning outcome, attitudes, learning experience and motivation. Analysis of the survey data shows that students had increased learning outcome, participation in class, and interest with Guided Inquiry Collaborative Learning.

The need for cybersecurity knowledge and skills is constantly growing as our lives become more integrated with the digital world. In order to meet this demand, educational institutions must continue to innovate within the field of cybersecurity education and make this educational process as effective and efficient as possible. We seek to accomplish this goal by taking an existing cybersecurity educational technology and adding automated grading and assessment functionality to it. This will reduce costs and maximize scalability by reducing or even eliminating the need for human graders.

The spotlight is on cybersecurity education programs to develop a qualified cybersecurity workforce to meet the demand of the professional field. The ACM CCECC (Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges) is leading the creation of a set of guidelines for associate degree cybersecurity programs called Cyber2yr, formerly known as CSEC2Y. A task force of community college educators have created a student competency focused curriculum that will serve as a global cybersecurity guide for applied (AAS) and transfer (AS) degree programs to develop a knowledgeable and capable associate level cybersecurity workforce. Based on the importance of the Cyber2yr work; ABET a nonprofit, non-governmental agency that accredits computing programs has created accreditation criteria for two-year cybersecurity programs.

Cybersecurity competitions have been shown to be an effective approach for promoting student engagement through active learning in cybersecurity. Players can gain hands-on experience in puzzle-based or capture-the-flag type tasks that promote learning. However, novice players with limited prior knowledge in cybersecurity usually found difficult to have a clue to solve a problem and get frustrated at the early stage. To enhance student engagement, it is important to study the experiences of novices to better understand their learning needs. To achieve this goal, we conducted a 4-month longitudinal case study which involves 11 undergraduate students participating in a college-level cybersecurity competition, National Cyber League (NCL) competition. The competition includes two individual games and one team game. Questionnaires and in-person interviews were conducted before and after each game to collect the players' feedback on their experience, learning challenges and needs, and information about their motivation, interests and confidence level. The collected data demonstrate that the primary concern going into these competitions stemmed from a lack of knowledge regarding cybersecurity concepts and tools. Players' interests and confidence can be increased by going through systematic training.

Augmented reality is changing the way its users see the world. Smart augmented-reality glasses, with high resolution Optical Head Mounted display, supplements views of the real-world using video, audio, or graphics projected in front of user's eye. The area of Smart Glasses and heads-up display devices is not a new one, however in the last few years, it has seen an extensive growth in various fields including education. Our work takes advantage of a student's ability to adapt to new enabling technologies to investigate improvements teaching techniques in STEM areas and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency in teaching the new course content. In this paper, we propose to focus on the application of Smart Augmented-Reality Glasses in cybersecurity education to attract and retain students in STEM. In addition, creative ways to learn cybersecurity education via Smart Glasses will be explored using a Discovery Learning approach. This mode of delivery will allow students to interact with cybersecurity theories in an innovative, interactive and effective way, enhancing their overall live experience and experimental learning. With the help of collected data and in-depth analysis of existing smart glasses, the ongoing work will lay the groundwork for developing augmented reality applications that will enhance the learning experiences of students. Ultimately, research conducted with the glasses and applications may help to identify the unique skillsets of cybersecurity analysts, learning gaps and learning solutions.

Conversational agents assist traditional teaching-learning instruments in proposing new designs for knowledge creation and learning analysis, across organizational environments. Means of building common educative background in both industry and academic fields become of interest for ensuring educational effectiveness and consistency. Such a context requires transferable practices and becomes the basis for the Agile adoption into Higher Education, at both curriculum and operational levels. The current work proposes a model for delivering Agile Scrum training through an assistive web-based conversational service, where analytics are collected to provide an overview on learners' knowledge path. Besides its specific applicability into Software Engineering (SE) industry, the model is to assist the academic SE curriculum. A user-acceptance test has been carried out among 200 undergraduate students and patterns of interaction have been depicted for 2 conversational strategies.

This paper presents the effects of problem based learning project on a high-school student in Technology school “Electronic systems” associated with Technical University Sofia. The problem is creating an intrusion detection system for Apache HTTP Server with duration 6 months. The intrusion detection system is based on a recurrent neural network classifier namely long-short term memory units.

We developed a virtualization-based infringement incident response tool for cyber security training system using Cloud. This tool was developed by applying the concept of attack and defense which is the basic of military war game modeling and simulation. The main purpose of this software is to cultivate cyber security experts capable of coping with various situations to minimize the damage in the shortest time when an infringement incident occurred. This tool acquired the invaluable certificate from Korean government agency. This tool shall provide CBT type remote education such as scenario based infringement incident response training, hacking defense practice, and vulnerability measure practice. The tool works in Linux, Window operating system environments, and uses Korean e-government framework and secure coding to construct a situation similar to the actual information system. In the near future, Internet and devices connected to the Internet will be greatly enlarged, and cyber security threats will be diverse and widespread. It is expected that various kinds of hacking will be attempted in an advanced types using artificial intelligence technology. Therefore, we are working on applying the artificial intelligence technology to the current infringement incident response tool to cope with these evolving threats.

Cybersecurity education and training have gained increasing attention in all sectors due to the prevalence and quick evolution of cyberattacks. A variety of platforms and systems have been proposed and developed to accommodate the growing needs of hands-on cybersecurity practice. However, those systems are either lacking sufficient flexibility (e.g., tied to a specific virtual computing service provider, little customization support) or difficult to scale. In this work, we present a cloud-based platform named EZSetup for hands-on cybersecurity practice at scale and our experience of using it in class. EZSetup is customizable and cloud-agnostic. Users can create labs through an intuitive Web interface and deploy them onto one or multiple clouds. We have used NSF funded Chameleon cloud and our private OpenStack cloud to develop, test and deploy EZSetup. We have developed 14 network and security labs using the tool and included six labs in an undergraduate network security course in spring 2019. Our survey results show that students have very positive feedback on using EZSetup and computing clouds for hands-on cybersecurity practice.

While the number of mobile applications are rapidly growing, these applications are often coming with numerous security flaws due to the lack of appropriate coding practices. Security issues must be addressed earlier in the development lifecycle rather than fixing them after the attacks because the damage might already be extensive. Early elimination of possible security vulnerabilities will help us increase the security of our software and mitigate or reduce the potential damages through data losses or service disruptions caused by malicious attacks. However, many software developers lack necessary security knowledge and skills required at the development stage, and Secure Mobile Software Development (SMSD) is not yet well represented in academia and industry. In this paper, we present a static analysis-based security analysis approach through design and implementation of a plugin for Android Development Studio, namely DroidPatrol. The proposed plugins can support developers by providing list of potential vulnerabilities early.

SQL injection is well known a method of executing SQL queries and retrieving sensitive information from a website connected database. This process poses a threat to those applications which are poorly coded in the today's world. SQL is considered as one of the top 10 vulnerabilities even in 2018. To keep a track of the vulnerabilities that each of the websites are facing, we employ a tool called Acunetix which allows us to find the vulnerabilities of a specific website. This tool also suggests measures on how to ensure preventive measures. Using this implementation, we discover vulnerabilities in an actual website. Such a real-world implementation would be useful for instructional use in a foundational cybersecurity course.