Visible to the public An Automated Synthesis Framework for Network Security and Resilience - July 2022Conflict Detection Enabled

Submitted by mikeprosise on Sat, 07/09/2022 - 9:30am

PI: Matthew Caesar

Co-PI: Dong (Kevin) Jin

Researchers: Matthew Caesar, Dong (Kevin) Jin, Bingzhe Liu, Santhosh Prabhu, Xiaoliang Wu

HARD PROBLEM(S) ADDRESSED
This refers to Hard Problems, released November 2012.

This project is developing the analysis methodology needed to support scientific reasoning about the resilience and security of networks, with a particular focus on network control and information/data flow. The core of this vision is an automated synthesis framework (ASF), which will automatically derive network state and repairs, from a set of specified correctness requirements and security policies. ASF consists of a set of techniques for performing and integrating security and resilience analyses applied at different layers in a real-time and automated fashion. This project is building both theoretical underpinnings and a practical realization of Science of Security. The proposed project covers four hard problems: (1) resilient architectures (primary), (2) scalability and composability, (3) policy-governed secure collaboration, and (4) security-metrics-driven evaluation, design, development and deployment.

PUBLICATIONS
Papers written as a result of your research from the current quarter only.

  • Gong Chen, Zheng Hu and Dong Jin. "Integrating I/O Time to Virtual Time System for High Fidelity Container-based Network Emulation", ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (PADS), June 2022. (Finalist for the Best Paper Award)
  • Gong Chen, Yanfeng Qu, and Dong Jin. "Cyber-Physical Simulation Testbed for MadIoT Attack Detection and Mitigation." ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (PADS), June 2022 (Extended Abstract)
  • D. Liu, T. Abdelzaher, T. Wang, Y. Hu, J. Li, S. Liu, M. Caesar, D. Kalaspura, J. Bhattacharyya, N. Srour, M. Wigness, J. Kim, G. Wang, G. Kimberly, D. Osipychev, IoBT-OS: Optimizing the Sensing-to-Decision Pipeline for the Internet of Things, International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), July 2022.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Each effort should submit one or two specific highlights. Each item should include a paragraph or two along with a citation if available. Write as if for the general reader of IEEE S&P.
The purpose of the highlights is to give our immediate sponsors a body of evidence that the funding they are providing (in the framework of the SoS lablet model) is delivering results that "more than justify" the investment they are making.

In the current quarter, our project progress is centered on addressing SoS lablet hard problems primarily in resilient architecture. Key highlights are listed as follows.

  • We continue to develop a simulation-based platform for cyber-physical system resilience and security evaluation, which addresses the resilient architecture and scalability hard problem. In the current quarter, we completed the development of a lightweight virtual time system that integrates precise I/O time for container-based network emulation and demonstrated VT-IO's usability and temporal fidelity improvement with a case study of a Bitcoin mining application. A paper describing this work was published in ACM SIGSIM-PADS'22 and we presented the paper in the conference in June 2022. The paper was listed in the Best Paper Finalist.
  • We have developed a design and evaluation framework for a self-driving "service provider infrastructure" that leverages our prior work on verification and synthesis to address the resilient architecture hard problem. In the current quarter, we continue to focus on network and container orchestration systems (e.g., Kubernetes). Our platform leverages AI planning algorithms to synthesize steps the system needs to take to protect itself against incoming attacks from an intelligent adversary. The team has a collaborative research project on applying model checking to embedded devices and networks. One application is to verify the power system's full observability policy in phasor measurement unit network design under cyber-attacks and link/device failures. We are developing a framework to evaluate the resilience of a PMU network in the context of link failures. We are conducting a comparative evaluation on how adding redundant links to the PMU network improves the observability using the IEEE 118 bus-system. We are preparing a manuscript describing this work for IEEE SmartGridComm 2022.
  • We continue to explore methods to detect and mitigate attacks caused by IoT botnets in the context of smart grid to address the resilient architecture hard problem. In the current quarter, we conducted extensive MADIoT attack simulation, detection and mitigation scheme evaluation on our testbed combining OpenDSS and Mininet. We presented a research poster describing this work at IIT College of Computing Research Day. We also published an extended abstract describing the unique testbed in ACM SIGSIM-PADS'22. Yanfeng Qu and Gong Chen presented the work in the Ph.D. colloquium in June 2022.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS

  • Matthew Caesar delivered a keynote speech at IoT Day at Mobisys 2022 in Portland, Oregon.
  • Matthew Caesar is serving as the sponsor chair for ACM SIGCOMM 2022.
  • Matthew Caesar will serve on the Program Committee for USENIX NSDI 2023.
  • Matthew Caesar is serving on the Program Committee for USENIX NSDI 2022.
  • Matthew Caesar is serving as a co-chair for the Networking Channel (https://networkingchannel.eu/), an online talk series for computer networking, systems, and security topics that is a joint initiative between EU's Empower initiative, the National Science Foundation's PAWR office, and ACM SIGCOMM. Talks are held online and are open to all, to provide broad reach into the community.
  • Matthew Caesar is serving as the Sponsor Chair for ACM SIGCOMM 2022.
  • Kevin Jin will serve as a Program Co-chair for ACM SIGSIM-PADS 2023.
  • Kevin Jin will serve as a guest editor for TOMACS-PADS special issue 2022/2023

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES

  • Kevin Jin, Neil Mcglohon and Xiaoliang Wu organized a Ph.D. colloquium as part of the ACM SIGSIM-PADS conference in June 2022. The Ph.D. colloquium includes a keynote speech and 10 student presentations with the objective of connecting talented young scholars with the established research community.
  • Yanfeng Qu successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in May 2022.
  • Matthew Caesar ran a summer camp at the University of Illinois called "Internet of Things" in June 2022. The camp taught high school students about IoT and security concepts and encouraged them to pursue careers and education in the exciting fields of computer science and cybersecurity.
  • Matthew Caesar co-chaired an event on network programmability in April 2022.
  • Matthew Caesar has undertaken substantial work to update his Internet of Things MOOC, which reaches over 17,000 students, including development of two new laboratory assignments allowing students to explore cybersecurity of Cisco IOS and core networks, as well as AWS IoT and cloud IoT platforms.
  • Matthew Caesar is also teaching CS 437: Internet of Things at the University of Illinois, which covers advanced concepts and security practices in IoT, and which will be taught to about 150 on-campus graduates/undergraduates, as well as about 150 graduate students who are part of the Illinois Masters in Computer Science program, many of whom are software development professionals working in companies across many sectors.
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