NUCIA always has ongoing projects of many types, from innovative research to working with our many corporate partners.
How to get involved? Always talk to the faculty or staff member who heads the project. It doesn't matter what your experience level is, we all have to start somewhere.
Does it pay? Some of the research projects do pay. Talk to the responsibale faculty member to find out. Also keep in mind the differnt jobs also pay differnt amounts, depending on who sponsored the work.
Architecture-Based Software ReliabilityThe black-box approach to the software reliability suffer from some limitations such as the effect of reliability growth of individual software components and the measurement of software quality when the product is actually released or tested. On the other hand, the white-box approach attempts to measure the quality of a software system based on its structure that is normally architected during the specification and design of the product. Although the architecture-based reliability measurement is promising, its existing limitations necessitate further research. The purpose of this project is to investigate the white-box research achievements with the goal of constructing a knowledge-base that can be used as an underpinning for future research. The results of the research will be collected into a conference article.
Contact: Azad Azadmenesh
Control System SecurityThis project investigates security issues in control systems that are part of a critical infrastructure. This includes:
- Domain Specific Languages
- Policy Verification/Enforcement
- Honeynets
- Virtual Testbeds for Vulnerability Discovery
Contact: Bill Mahoney
Partners: Robin Gandhi, Ken Dick
Discovery CorrelationWhat's more important: The assessor's knowledge or their toolset?
This project investigates the relationship between the likelyhood of discovering a vulnerability and the attributes of the assessor - education, process followed, tools used, etc.
Contact: Steve Nugen
Domain Specific LanguagesThis project involves developing a new domain specific language which will be used for specifying regulatory security policies for control systems used in industrial settings.
Specifically the research targets SCADA systems, System Control And Data Acquisition. SCADA systems control critical infrastructure in many disparate areas such as the electrical power grid, water supplies, and factory automation systems.
Contact: Bill Mahoney
Enterprise Risk ManagementThis research is focused on determining factors that impede the establishment of risk management and security programs in businesses. This includes general risk management as well as specifics in areas of electronic commerce and disaster preparedness.
Contact: Dwight Haworth
International Cyber Defense Workshop A collaboration with Booz-Allen Hamilton and OASN (NII), the International Cyber Defense Workshop (ICDW) delivers top notch educational experiences to many countries allied with the United States. The fall 2008 evnet saw sixteen countries participate.Opportunities:
- Content Development
- Content Delivery
- Exercise Development
- Exercise Delivery
- Laboratory Support
Contact: Lucas Wentz
Identifying Security Vulnerabilities from Large Software Repositories using Domain-specific OntologiesSoftware security vulnerabilities are weaknesses in software that can lead to the violation of security policies. A successful attack may even lead to a reduction in the perceived value or usefulness of the system. In complex software systems, vulnerabilities are not easy to find as they are often scattered across multiple components and their multi-dimensional interactions. Thus, identifying and predicting their locations continues to be an open problem. We plan to develop a semantic model for identifying security vulnerabilities by studying historical data collected from a large software project.s version control repository.
Contact: Harvey Siy
Partners: Robin Gandhi
Software Assurance ToolsThis project explores the current automation tools available to analyze software dependability properties and attempts to correlate their results for meaningful analysis.
Contact: Robin Gandhi
Spread Spectrum Modulation AnalysisWe are pursuing next generation modulation techniques to increase the through put, reliability and security on the physical layer of existing and future network protocols. This utilizes the observation that Nyquists theorem may no longer be valid.
Contact: Ken Dick
Vulnerabilty DiscoveryThis project involves the discovery, confirmation, and mitigation of vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications.
Contact: Steve Nugen
