Mason students build drones as part of Commonwealth Cyber Initiative

Colleen Rich — Tue, 31 May 2022 14:11:38 +0000

Mason students build drones as part of Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Colleen Rich Tue, 05/31/2022 - 10:11

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George Mason University Cybersecurity Engineering associate professor Mohamed Gebril led a team of students to the first-ever BattleDrone competition, an exercise coordinated through the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative.

Learn about Mason's Cybersecurity Engineering Bachelor's

In April, Mason professor Mohamed Gebril (center in green) took a team of students to Commonwealth Cyber Initiative's BattleDrones Competition at Virginia Tech’s Drone Park. Photo by Peter Means/Virginia Tech

In April, Mohamed Gebril, an associate professor in George Mason University’s Cyber Security Engineering Department, took a team of students into “battle.” The team traveled to Blacksburg, Virginia, for a BattleDrones Competition that was hosted by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) at Virginia Tech’s Drone Park.

Gebril emphasized that the inaugural battle was not really a competition but a learning experience. CCI began working on this competition in 2020, but the pandemic halted its progress. This was the first time the event was held.

“It was not a competition per se. All the teams worked together to get this project off the ground,” said Gebril, who teaches in Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing. “CCI-VT ran into some issues with some of the computer vision tools, but overall it was a great learning experience.”

The main objective of the competition, according to Gebril, was to have student teams assemble their own drones with materials provided by CCI-VT research group, as well as promote interest in these kinds of activities among younger students.

For the competition, Gebril pulled together a team of Mason cyber security engineering majors interested in hands-on opportunities, which included senior Kylie Amison, senior Corrado Apostolakis, senior Brandon Henry, junior Casey Cho, sophomore Zaid Osta, and Mahmoud Zaghloul, an area high school student.

By all accounts, it was a successful trip.

“The team did really well,” Gebril said. “They were able to assemble the drone successfully. We are also working on continuing this project by adding cybersecurity features to enhance this learning experience.”

Will they compete again?

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Our students love this project and how it applies concepts learned in classrooms toward this hands-on activity.”

CCI is a network of Virginia industry, higher education, and economic development partners dedicated to cybersecurity research, innovation, and workforce development. Mason leads the Northern Virginia Node of the network.

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Students

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

College of Engineering and Computing

high-tech talent

Mason Momentum

Secure manufacturing saves energy and protects businesses

Martha Bushong — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 16:36:05 +0000

Secure manufacturing saves energy and protects businesses Martha Bushong Thu, 04/15/2021 - 12:36

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Paulo Costa

Duminda Wijesekera

Paulo Costa (on right) with his team in the RARE Lab.

Cybersecurity experts from Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing are playing an important role in protecting American manufacturing automation and supply chains from cyber threats and designing better security into advanced manufacturing plants.

Through its membership with the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII, pronounced sī-man-ē), researchers will focus on developing an integrated cybersecurity architecture and achieving significant energy efficiencies in manufacturing.

The institute is led by the University of Texas at San Antonio and has an initial 5-year budget of $111 million, including $70 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The remaining budget is comprised of cost-sharing, member contributions, and other factors that together will ensure the self-sustainability of CyManII after this initial period.

As a managing member, Mason is overseeing and operating CyManII’s East Coast headquarters on the Arlington Campus. The headquarters will house the institute’s primary offices, meeting space, and training facilities for the National Capital Region.

“The Arlington facility will house lab space and equipment to demonstrate, test, and validate CyManII’s emerging cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing technologies and products,” says Associate Professor and Vice President for Securing Automation and Supply Chain Paulo Costa. “Our proximity to the Department of Energy and Washington, D.C. will be useful to visitors when we return to in-person meetings and events.”

The 13,000-square-foot facility supports robotic platforms that evaluate security vulnerabilities, the impact of 5G on autonomous vehicles, the power grid, smart buildings and cities, and smart manufacturing. The space will also host a robotic smart manufacturing testbed and provide meeting and temporary office space for visiting researchers and staff.

Other benefits of filling the role of managing partner include representation on the governance board for leadership on strategic directions, planning, prioritization, and key programming.

Mason will participate in road mapping efforts and strategic decisions about investments, technical focus, and projects. Mason faculty will also gain complimentary access to CyManII events, tech showcases and meetings, and participate in annual RFP competition with extensive outreach promoting completed projects/technologies.

Mason researchers from the College of Engineering and Computing, who are setting up the lab, are playing key roles in CyManII’s first-year projects, finding ways to protect manufacturing automation and supply chains from cyber threats, and designing better security into advanced manufacturing plants.

In one of the projects, Professor Duminda Wijesekera, CyManII’s Coordinated Vulnerability Awareness Lead, is working with Bo Yu, research assistant professor, and Matt Jablonski, a PhD candidate and research assistant, to study Smart Manufacturing Architecture (SMA).

SMA has the potential to make American manufacturing more productive, more energy-efficient, more competitive, and verifiably correct. “We hope our research in Smart Manufacturing Architecture provides the backbone for modeling that will speed up the adoption of these technologies and processes and help companies to create new, secure, integrated systems,” says Jablonski. “We know that the sooner we can identify risks, the better we can help manufacturers mitigate the risks.”

The team’s work addresses potential methods for formally analyzing safety and security risks in Automated Manufacturing Systems. They emphasize how to identify components and the communication interfaces and components that can be modeled using formal methods.

Recently the team used an automated manufacturing system that produces aluminum cans to show how these processes are modeled using a suite of formal methods that included Linear Time propositional Temporal Logic, Architecture Analysis, and Design Language, as well as fault and attack tree analysis.

“This work is some of the most exciting work I’ve ever done,” says Yu. “The real-world application of this knowledge has tremendous impact. This modeling and what it does can protect the reputation of a business by finding weaknesses early on.”

As CyManII’s work becomes more established, the research enterprise will expand and grow into additional areas, such as other cyber-physical systems that directly control physical processes such as machinery, vehicles, cranes, and other movable infrastructure.

“Formal guarantees are needed in secure manufacturing automation because, in their absence, there is no acceptable way to guarantee against failures that occur due to malice and natural faults,” says Wijesekera. “These failures can affect the operational safety of machinery, operators, and the equipment that uses manufactured parts, resulting in wasted material and energy.”

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Research

CyManII

Mason Momentum