UIUC SoS Lablet Quarterly Executive Summary - July 2022

A. Fundamental Research
High level report of result or partial result that helped move security science forward-- In most cases it should point to a "hard problem". These are the most important research accomplishments of the Lablet in the previous quarter.

Uncertainty in Security Analysis

• We presented our paper on cybersecurity incident response at HoTSoS 2022 as work-in-progress
• We presented our paper on importance sampling at DSN 2022.

An Automated Synthesis Framework for Network Security and Resilience

• 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 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.
• 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.

Resilient Control of Cyber-Physical Systems with Distributed Learning

• We have developed a procedure for reliability analysis of cyber-physical systems with complex perception modules implemented using machine learning models.
• We have developed and implemented a nearly sample-optimal algorithm for statistical model checking of markov decision processes. This advances the state of the art in achieving resiliency (hard problem)  as optimal data usage for verification makes the algorithms effective for offline analysis of autonomous system design as well as on board monitoring.

B. Community Engagement(s)
Research interaction in the community including workshops, seminars, competitions, etc.

• 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
• The GRAIC 22 competition was successfully held as part of CPSWeek 22.
• A mini-version of the GRAIC Autonomous racing competition was demonstrated to the public at the Engineering Open House at Illinois, May 8-9^th 2022.
• Mitra served as the Program Co-Chair of International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS) which was part of CPSWeek 2022.
• Mitra served as the General Chair of HoTSoS 22. May 5-7 2022.
• Shakkottai has conducted a week-long workshop on Causal Inference, January 2022. This was a bootcamp that focused on models for causality, and their applciations to machine learning.
• Dullerud presentation at POSTECH, Korea; “Learning for Safety and Control in Dynamical Systems”, April, 2022.

Publications

• 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.
• Exploiting monotonicity and symmetry for efficient simulation of highly dependable systems, the 52nd Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, DSN 2022.

C. Educational Advances
Impact to courses or curriculum at your school or elsewhere that indicates an increased training or rigor in security research.

• 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.
• We are creating and organizing a Summer School for highschool students in August 2022, supported by the SoS program and Illinois WYSE (Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering). All the educational material, code, and presentations will be made publicly available.