Mason Competitive Cyber scores multiple wins at CyberForge 2024

Martha Bushong — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:50:37 +0000

Mason Competitive Cyber scores multiple wins at CyberForge 2024 Martha Bushong Wed, 02/14/2024 - 12:50

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The George Mason University team Mason Competitive Cyber scored first, second, and fourth place at the Cyberforge 2024 competition held on February 11-12. During the two-day conference students heard from industry professionals and enhanced their cyberskills by competing in the Capture the Flag (CTF) competition.

“Winning a Virginia-wide competition is pretty good news by itself,” said Cyber Security Engineering Department Chair Paulo Costa. “CyberForge is especially important due to the quality of the teams, the level of effort every team and associated organizations/universities put into it, and the impact it has in the Virginia cybersecurity space."

Costa consider this one of the two most important competitions in the area. The other is Virginia Military Institute’s Cyber Fusion event happening later this month on February 23-24.

The Cyberforge event featured companies such as MITRE, CCI, G2OPS, HAK5, CompTIA, Virginia Cyber Range, WiCyS, TCM Security, and more. The Mason students competed against top collegiate teams and industry professionals from around Virginia. Students value competitions as these events allow them to meet talented students and industry professionals outside their home institution.

The team won multiple different prizes, including but not limited to Canakit raspberry pi 5 kits, CompTIA vouchers, and HAK5 gift cards, but they are most proud of the winner’s plaque, which they hope to display in the department’s office.

The event was hosted by the Coastal Virginia Cybersecurity Student Association (CVCSA), Coastal Virginia Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (COVA CCI), and a local college/university's cybersecurity club.

Topics

Cybersecurity

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Mason Competitive Cyber

Students

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

Mason faculty part of $1.7 million NTIA Wireless Innovation Fund project using AI to test O-RAN components

Teresa Donnellan — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 19:17:21 +0000

Mason faculty part of $1.7 million NTIA Wireless Innovation Fund project using AI to test O-RAN components Teresa Donnellan Tue, 12/12/2023 - 14:17

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Kai Zeng

Two College of Engineering and Computing faculty members are part of a project awarded $1.7 million by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. Kai Zeng, a professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, and Vijay K. Shah, an assistant professor in the cyber security engineering department at George Mason University, are part of a team led by researchers from Michigan State University to test Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) components using artificial intelligence (AI).

Kai Zeng

Zeng, Shah, and their colleagues will use AI to guide the process of running hundreds of millions of test cases within complex O-RAN systems. “We can accelerate the testing process and make it automatic [with AI],” said Zeng.

The team’s testing includes three objectives: test for whether the O-RAN is secure, test the O-RAN's performance (i.e., its capacity for users in different app environments), and, finally, test for interoperability. When a system passes these myriad tests, Shah noted, “At least you can guarantee that, as long as a given environment is not very, very unique, it will work.” Supporting open and interoperable wireless networks is the aim of the NTIA’s Wireless Innovation Fund.

Inherently interoperable, O-RAN architecture is designed to comprise open and standardized interfaces for disaggregated RAN functions to lower the barrier for different vendors and third-party software developers to contribute to RAN innovation.

“It's not like the current monolithic, proprietary cellular networks,” Zeng explained. “If you purchase, say, Ericsson products, you can only use their hardware and software. But now, with the open RAN interfaces, different vendors can come into play that are just based on some generalized hardware; and they can build a lot of software applications or functions in this O-RAN architecture.” O-RAN architecture is standardized by the O-RAN Alliance, a consortium of cellular operators, large vendors, start-ups, and academic institutions.

Vijay K. Shah

Zeng’s 5G/NextG wireless expertise and Shah’s O-RAN research and development work in the NextG Wireless Lab@George Mason University positioned the pair perfectly to join this project. The project grew from Zeng’s working relationship with Michigan State and AT&T researchers, with whom he completed an earlier project funded jointly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Defense’s Securely Operating Through 5G Infrastructure program. That project developed a product called WindTexter based on generative AI. Shah’s O-RAN work began late in 2020 with seed funding from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative xG Testbed. He went on to secure a separate NSF grant, Open AI Cellular, which resulted in the development of a novel AI-driven controller to automatically control or configure O-RAN system parameters.

If the project goes well, Zeng said, the research team would like to see their hardware and software tools guide private industry in purchasing, testing, and, ultimately, adopting O-RAN.

Topics

Cybersecurity

Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Department of Cyber Security Engineering faculty

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty

Artificial Intelligence

5G/6G Wireless Communications

WCC

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program