VU SoS Lablet Quarterly Executive Summary - April 2019

A. Fundamental Research

The Science of Security for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Lablet focuses on (1) Foundations of CPS Resilience, (2) Analytics for CPS Cybersecurity and (3) Development of a Multi-model Testbed for Simulation–based Evaluation of Resilience.

• We consider the problem of using diversity and trustiness to increase structural robustness of networks. Diversity means that nodes in a network are of different types and have many variants. Trustiness means that a small subset of nodes is immune to failures and attacks. We show that by combining diversity and trustiness within the network, we can significantly limit the attacker’s ability to change the underlying network structure by strategically removing nodes.
• We continued work as planned on the data extraction from the key policy documents that are related to smart grid cybersecurity. This quarter, our work resulted in completing the following critical tasks: (1) Constructing text as raw data for developing a conceptual model from the NIST guidelines for smart grid cybersecurity including cumulative materials provided in NIST sources and customized data from the NIST cybersecurity framework and (2) designing rules for extracting data from text.  
• In the transportation domain our simulation and testbed efforts were focusing on two major topics: (1) applying and evaluating data-space randomization techniques for securing autonomous vehicle platforms against non-control data attacks and (2) developing a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) based simulation platform for investigating the effects and potential defense strategies against cyber attacks in railway transportation networks. In the power domain, we developed a WebGME-based Design Studio, which provides a web-based graphical interface with rich collaboration and version management facilities for developing simulation scenarios. The generated datasets are used to develop machine learning-based methods for predicting future power demand along with adversarial attacks against smart meter readings to influence the predicted load.

B. Community Engagement(s)

• Our research related to RoboScape was presented in the SIGCSE 2019 conference.
• Validation study on Tallinn Manual 2.0 that we conducted to test the research methodology is now publicly available.

C. Educational Advances

• The PI at the MIT sublablet is teaching a graduate-level class on International Relations Theory in the Cyber Age, drawing on policy-relevant materials. The course draws from student participants from different parts of MIT. 2015 edition of the course is now available at: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/political-science/17-445-international-relations-theory-in-the-cyber-age-fall-2015/