cybersecurity

Security analysis of Docker-based containerized environments

Operating System (OS) virtualization, also known as container-based virtualization, has gained momentum over the past few years thanks to its lightweight nature and support for agility. However, its compelling features come at the price of a reduced isolation level compared to the traditional host-based virtualization techniques, exposing workloads to various faults, such as container escape. Those faults might be manifested as host OS bugs, container runtime vulnerabilities, and/or poor container deployment choices and profile configuration. The latter aspect is particularly critical as

Monitoring containerized environments for security state error detection

Operating System (OS) virtualization, also known as container-based virtualization, has gained momentum over the past few years thanks to its lightweight nature and support for agility. However, its compelling features come at the price of a reduced isolation level compared to the traditional host-based virtualization techniques, exposing workloads to various threats, such as container escape. In those threats, compromised or rogue containers might exploit existing vulnerabilities or poor container deployment choices to successfully inject security state errors (e.g., breaking out of the

Advanced Breach and Attack Simulation using ML

Cybersecurity is becoming a need more than ever. Organizations need to protect their digital assets and are required to earn certifications to prove the compliance to the regulations and rules. For this, these assets must be assessed to ensure the target security posture and to get certified or pass an audit on yearly basis. This is a daunting and costly task as it often requires a third-party tester that tries to penetrate the system, under agreement. Breach and Attack Simulation is a new method that allows to do this penetration testing in-house, using some automation tools. Some of these

Breaking the Vehicle Over-The-Air Update System

A modern vehicle is composed of around 100 Electronic Control Unit (ECU) connected via several types of networks. An ECU is an embedded device, similar to a RaspberryPI, running an operating system, e.g., Linux-based or real-time OS, on top of which different software and firmware may run, depending on the application. Due to the imperfection of humans, software can have faults and vulnerabilities, which can lead to catastrophic failures that threatens human lives. This makes the manufacturers liable to such failures and thus often caused millions of vehicles recalls for repair. A smart

Divyanshu

Divyanshu, a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at KAUST, focuses on spin-controlled devices for hardware security primitives.

Adaptive Intrusion Management System for Databases

Muhamad Felemban, Assistant Professor, Computer Engineering Department, KFUPM

-

B9 L2 H1

With the growing cyber-security threats to governmental and organizational infrastructures, the need to develop high resilient systems that preserve the security and privacy of data is becoming increasingly important. Although there is a large body of work on security and privacy countermeasures, cyber-attacks still persist. A prominent type of such attacks is intrusion attack that aims at data tampering, which can impair the availability and the integrity of data.

Finding the linchpins of the dark web: Understanding and detecting malicious infrastructure

Dr. Sumayah Alrwais, Assistant Professor, King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA

-

B9 L2 H1 R2322

In this talk, Sumayah will survey a number of malicious hosting infrastructures for different services and approaches to detecting them. Among them are works on an emerging trend of Bulletproof hosting services reselling infrastructure from lower-end service providers, use of residential proxy as a service to avoid server-side blocking and DNS based hosting infrastructure.

Resilient Computing: when Dependability meets Cybersecurity

-

B9 L2 H2 R2325

Computing and communications infrastructures have become commodities that transact huge quantities of data and are pervasively interconnected, inside countries, and worldwide. Modern societies largely depend on them.

Practical Cryptographic Framework to Manage Security and Privacy for IoT Endpoint devices

-

B1 L4 R4214

In this talk, the speaker will provide a high-level introduction to his recent research on IoT endpoint security. Firstly, he will introduce requirements followed by a discussion on cryptographic algorithm implementation. He will mainly focus on an overview of efficient cryptography for IoT endpoints and system privacy issues. Then he will discuss security management approaches, positives, negatives and challenges to resolve, linking to the endpoint device security section with regards to realistic device needs/capabilities.

Multi-layer Red Team vs. Blue Team Methods towards Secure Cyber-Physical Energy Systems

Charalambos (Harrys) Konstantinou, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with Florida A&M University and Florida State University (FAMU-FSU) College of Engineering

-

B9 L2 H1

Election hacking, power grid cyber-attacks, troll farms, fake news, ransomware, and other terms have entered our daily vocabularies and are here to stay. Cybersecurity touches nearly every part of our daily lives. Most importantly, national security and economic vitality rely on a safe, resilient, and stable cyber-space. We rely on cyber-physical systems with hardware devices, software platforms, and network systems to connect, travel, communicate, power our homes, provide health care, run our economy, etc. However, cyber-threats and attacks have grown exponentially over the past years, exposing both corporate and personal data, disrupting critical operations, causing a public health and safety impact, and imposing high costs on the economy. In this talk, we will focus on cyber-physical energy systems (CPES) as the backbone of critical infrastructure, and provide a research perspective and present red team security threats, challenges, and blue team countermeasures. We will discuss recent approaches on developing low-budget targeted cyberattacks against CPES, designing resilient methods against false data, and the need for an accurate assessment environment achieved through the inclusion of hardware-in-the-loop testbeds.

Embedded and Cyber Connected Systems (ECCS) Workshop

Prof. Ahmed Eltawil, Prof. Charalambos Konstantinou, Prof. Khaled Nabil Salama

-

B2 L5 R5220

The workshop aims to bring together experts to present their latest research efforts related to Embedded and Cyber Connected Systems architectures and platforms that can scale efficiently, as well as operate securely and resiliently to provide the necessary resources demanded by current and future network applications.

Cybersecurity of Industrial Control Systems - Challenges and Research Directions

-

B9 L2 H2 H2.

This Distinguished Lecture is part of the CS Graduate Seminars. Abstract Industrial Control Systems play an important role in monitoring, controlling, and automating critical infrastructure such as water, gas, oil, and electricity. Recent years have seen a number of high-profile cyber attacks on such infrastructure, exemplified by Triton, Colonial Pipeline, and the Ukrainian Power Grid attacks. This naturally begs the question: how should we manage cyber security risks in such infrastructure on which the day-to-day functioning of our society relies? What are the complexities of managing

Leveraging Power Systems’ Modularity to support Resiliency Against Synthetic Cyber Disasters

Dr. Salam Baniahmed, Technical Manager, Veloce Energy

-

B1 L4 R4214

The fact of power systems’ criticality to national security mandates continuous attention to the worst-case disruption scenarios. In a cyber world, grid modernization efforts have been hindered by cyber-related concerns. This webinar sheds some light on resiliency achievement by utilizing the modular cyber-physical nature of power systems, from an electron in a battery to a digital bit in the internet abyss.

Towards Cyber Resilient Autonomous Vehicle Ecosystems: Pitfalls and Enablers

-

B9 L2 H2 H2

Currently, there is a substantial push towards autonomous vehicles in the market. However, fully autonomous vehicles, using extensive fault-tolerance e.g., in x-by-wire functions, are still not quite safe from an accidental faults perspective. Furthermore, they present an even greater threat surface to combined accidental and malicious faults. This pitfall has been very slowly recognized by car makers. The consequences of such accidents or attacks are likely to be severe, life-threatening included. This talk will discuss this threat surface in an analysis including the whole ecosystem.

Security, Privacy, and Human

-

B4 L5 R5209

Security and privacy systems are often composed of complex components and details. However, users’ experience shouldn’t be as complex. In this seminar, Eman will discuss the human factor in the security and privacy chain. While human privacy perceptions and behaviors have been investigated in Western societies, little is known about these issues in non-Western societies.

Scheduling tasks in energy harvesting IoT

-

B4 L5 R5209

Internet of Things (IoT) applications can exploit energy harvesting systems to guarantee virtually uninterrupted operations. However, the use of energy harvesting poses issues concerning the optimization of the utility of the application while guaranteeing energy neutrality of the devices.

Memory Forensics 2.0

-

B9 L2 H2 H2

The risk of security breaches is now higher than ever, and attackers routinely break into corporate networks, government services, and even critical infrastructures. As a result, it is not a matter of `if' a system will be compromised, but only a matter of `when' -- thus making the way we handle computer incidents and investigations of paramount importance.

The SCION Research and Education Network

-

B9 L2 H2 H2

Imagining a new Internet architecture enables us to explore new networking concepts without the constraints imposed by the current Infrastructure. In this presentation, we invite you to join us on our 14-year-long expedition of creating the SCION next-generation secure Internet architecture.

Security and privacy in centralized and decentralized machine learning

-

B4 L5 R5209

Machine learning (ML) is vulnerable to security and privacy attacks. Whereas security attacks aim at preventing model convergence or forcing convergence to wrong models, privacy attacks attempt to disclose the data used to train the model.

RC3 Advisory Board Distinguished Lectures Workshop

RC3 Advisory Board

-

B5 L5 R5220

Machine learning (ML) has witnessed remarkable advancements in recent years, demonstrating its effectiveness in a wide array of applications, including intrusion detection systems (IDS). However, when operating in adversarial environments, ML-based systems are susceptible to a range of attacks.

Towards Transparency of IoT Device Presence

-

B9 L2 H2 H2

As many types of IoT devices worm their way into numerous settings and many aspects of our daily lives, awareness of their presence and functionality becomes a source of major concern. Hidden IoT devices can snoop (via sensing) on nearby unsuspecting users, and impact the environment where unaware users are present, via actuation.

Data, AI and Cybersecurity: Synergies and Interconnection

-

B9 L2 H2 H2

This Dean's Distinguished Lecture is part of the ECE Graduate Seminar. Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, led by deep learning, have gained unprecedented momentum over the past decade.

Dependability assessment work at City, University of London and possible synergies with RC3 at KAUST

-

B4 L5 R5209

Abstract The talk will give an overview of research at the Department of Computer Science at the City University of London, focusing on the past and current dependability work at the Centre for Software Reliability. The talk will conclude with an overview of related research that is continuing or planned to start at City in 2024 and possible synergies and opportunities for collaboration with RC3 at KAUST. Brief Biography Ilir Gashi holds PhD (2007) and BEng (Honours) (2003) degrees in Software Reliability and Computing, respectively, from the City, University of London, where he is currently a

Securing Cyber-Physical and IoT Systems in Smart Living Environments

Prof. Sajal K. Das is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, and Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA.

-

B4 L5 R5220

Our daily lives are becoming increasingly dependent on smart cyber-physical infrastructures, such as smart homes and cities, smart grid, smart transportation, smart healthcare, smart agriculture, and so on.

Exploring the Human Element in Combating Malicious Software Threats

-

B9 L2 H2

Malicious software or malware is a serious cybersecurity threat and the research community has explored it extensively for almost three decades. Since it is believed that people are often the weak link in cybersecurity, exploring malware attacks and defenses in the human context can provide new insights into how the threat posed by malware can be addressed.

ML-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems: Resilience threats and a mitigation approach

-

B4 L5 R5220

With the ever-increasing amount of cyberthreats out there, securing IT and OT infrastructures against these threats has become not only desirable, but fundamental. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) are key assets for system protection, providing early alerts of network attacks. An important class of NIDS are those based on ML techniques, around which a substantial amount of research is being done these days. Unfortunately, being ML-based, these NIDS can be targeted by adversarial evasion attacks (AEA), which malicious parties try to exploit to perform network attacks without being detected.

KAUST Associate Professor Andrea Fratalocchi’s research leads to Institute of Physics Fellowship

1 min read ·
Andrea Fratalocchi, associate professor in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) division, was recently granted a Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) by the Institute of Physics (IOP). Fratalocchi was awarded the IOP's highest level of membership in recognition of his outstanding accomplishments in physics.

Three papers accepted to SmartGridComm 2021

1 min read ·
Three papers accepted to SmartGridComm 2021. 1) " CHIMERA: A Hybrid Estimation Approach to Limit the Effects of False Data Injection Attacks on Electric Power Grid" in collaboration with Yier Jin's group from University of Florida. 2) " Cyber-Physical Disaster Response of Power Supply Using Centralised-to-Distributed Framework" in collaboration with Fei Teng's group from Imperial College London. 3) " Attack Detection and Localization in Smart Grid with Image-based Deep Learning" in collaboration with Mostafa Mohammadpourfard's group from Istanbul Technical University.

Meet KAUST new student: Ioannis Zografopoulos

1 min read ·
Ioannis Zografopoulos is a Ph.D. student who joined KAUST this fall as a Ph.D. candidate and member of the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems (SENTRY) Lab under the supervision of Professor Charalambos Konstantinou. Zografopoulos believes that KAUST's renowned faculty, global reputation and research infrastructure make the University the ideal environment for him to develop high-quality, impactful research.

Deeper defense against cyber attacks

1 min read ·
To address the growing threat of cyberattacks on industrial control systems, a KAUST team including Fouzi Harrou, Wu Wang and led by Ying Sun has developed an improved method for detecting malicious intrusions.

KAUST SENTRY team wins 2021 Cybersecurity Games & Conference Embedded Security Challenge

1 min read ·
The SENTRY Lab team wins the 18th annual CSAW Cybersecurity Games & Conference’s (CSAW '21) Embedded Security Challenge (ESC).

Blocking microgrid cyberattacks to keep the power flowing

1 min read ·
Power grids have become far more complex in recent decades due to energy demands, environmental regulations and small-scale renewable energy systems that turn businesses and individuals into combined consumer-producers. One way to ensure that power supplies remain resilient is to create small groups of sources and loads called microgrids. Microgrids can operate independently of the main grid when required, such as supporting hospitals during natural disasters, for example. As microgrids grow more complex, they require sophisticated computer networks to coordinate, control and distribute

Load-Altering Attacks Against Power Grids under Low-Inertia Conditions

1 min read ·
Load-Altering Attacks Against Power Grids under COVID-19 Low-Inertia Conditions: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our society by forcing shutdowns and shifting the way people interacted worldwide. In relation to the impacts on the electric grid, it created a significant decrease in energy demands across the globe. Recent studies have shown that the low demand conditions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns combined with large renewable generation have resulted in extremely low-inertia grid conditions. In our work, in collaboration with Subhash Lakshminarayana, University of Warwick, UK, and Juan

A Digital Twin for cybersecurity in IoT devices

1 min read ·
Security decoupling in IoT communications is enforced with a Digital Twin that guarantees internal traffic isolation and immediate action if any unauthorized communication attempt is detected

Mitigation of Cyberattacks through Battery Storage for Stable Microgrid Operation

1 min read ·
Mitigation of Cyberattacks through Battery Storage for Stable Microgrid Operation: Power grids are undergoing radical changes to meet energy demands, comply with environmental regulations, and improve the quality of service and system resilience. The inclusion of information and communication technologies and embedded devices enables the remote coordination, and control of microgrids (MG) and has transformed traditional power systems into cyber-physical systems. The security of MG-enabled power systems should not be overlooked given the plethora of cyberattacks against this pillar of critical

Simple hardware to defend microgrid attacks

1 min read ·
An inexpensive piece of hardware integrated with solar panel controllers can protect isolated power networks from cyberattacks.

An Effective Security Scheme for Attacks on Sample Value Messages in IEC 61850 Automated Substations

1 min read ·
The trend of transforming substations into smart automated facilities has led to their swift digitalization and automation. To facilitate data exchange among equipment within these substations, the IEC 61850 standard has become the predominant standard. However, this standardization has inadvertently made these substations more susceptible to cyberattacks, which is a significant concern given the confidential information that is transmitted. As a result, cybersecurity in substations is becoming an increasingly critical topic. IEC 62351 standard provides guidelines and considerations for

Distributed Energy Resources Cybersecurity Outlook: Vulnerabilities, Attacks, Impacts, and Mitigations

1 min read ·
The digitization and decentralization of the electric power grid represent crucial steps toward achieving both economic and environmental sustainability. In pursuit of this objective, distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar panels, battery storage systems, and electric vehicles, are increasingly integrated into power systems. These DERs offer several advantages to power utilities by reducing operational costs and deferring investments for the expansion of the power system network while also affording users and aggregators greater control over their electricity generation and

Xiaojie Zhu

Xiaojie Zhu is a staff research scientist at KAUST. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor of cybersecurity in the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, College of Engineering, Abu Dhabi University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science, University of Oslo, Norway. Xiaojie's research interests are data security and privacy, software security, decentralized trust and infrastructure, and applied cryptography. He has published in prestigious journals such as IEEE TDSC, IEEE TPDS, JNCA, and JOS. One of his articles was included in the 21st annual

Roberto Di Pietro

Professor, Computer Science
Professor Di Pietro is a cybersecurity expert who excels in building and leading research and innovation labs in the private sector, government and academia. He works on critical infrastructure protection, adopting an artificial intelligence-driven approach in collaboration with major stakeholders.

Noor Hussein

Noor Hussein is a dedicated learner in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. She earned her undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Khalifa University (KU) in Abu Dhabi, UAE, with the highest honors. In the fall of 2022, Hussein embarked on her academic journey by joining the Master's program in Machine Learning at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. She is expected to graduate from MBZUAI in the summer of 2024. During the summer of 2023, Hussein got the opportunity to join as a Visiting student at King Abdullah

Moaaz Hasan Fayome

Moaaz Hasan Fayumy is a senior undergraduate student at MIT, specializing in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In the capacity of a researcher with the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) at KAUST, he has engaged in projects concerning the development of methods for solid-state battery 'fingerprinting', a technique designed to improve hardware security. His work is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach, merging principles of electrical engineering and computer science in the context of real-world challenges. Amid the complexity and technical difficulties

Michał Forystek

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Computer Science Master's student at the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) under the supervision of Professor Charalambos Konstantinou.

Martins Bruvelis

Senior Information Technology Specialist, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering
Martins is a Tier 3 technical support specialist. He specializes in resolving complex IT infrastructure challenges, provides advanced support, and develops, maintains, and enhances critical software applications and tools. His quantum physics and data science background has refined an investigative, analytical, and data-driven perspective, enabling insightful decision-making and innovative interdisciplinary solutions when addressing complex issues across a broad spectrum of expertise.

Majed Mazin Zamzami

Majed Zamzami is an undergraduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is studying computer science with a focus in cybersecurity. Majed joined the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) led by Professor Charalambos (Harrys) Konstantinou as a KAUST Gifted Student Program (KGSP) student with interest in cybersecurity and optimization.

Marc Dacier

Professor, Computer Science
Leveraging 20+ years of international experience, Professor Dacier leads the charge in uncovering internet vulnerabilities and developing robust defenses, building a more secure digital future for all.

Mahmoud Attia

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Mahmoud Attia is currently an MS/PHD student working with the SeRBER research group led by Prof. Marc Dacier. His research interests are in network security, within the areas of IT and OT security. He previously joined KAUST as a visiting student in the summer of 2023.

Ioannis (Yannis) Zografopoulos

Ioannis Zografopoulos received his Ph.D. at the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division (CEMSE) of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2023. Prior, he graduated with a B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in Computer, Communications, and Network Engineering, and an M.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece, in 2014 and 2015, respectively. His research interests include cyber-physical systems security, with an emphasis on embedded systems for industrial, distributed energy, and power grid

Ines Pinto Gouveia

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cyber Resilience Research Group
Working towards building safe, secure and resilient systems.

Ilies Benhabbour

Ilies is working with professor Marc Dacier on the following subject: Fingerprinting of intra network semi active components in end-to-end communications. That is to say that we want to be able to identify components which may exist between two devices. It can be either something normal like a firewall or a proxy, but it can also be something malicious like a man in the middle attack. The project's goal will thus be to identify how we can do so, and what kind of experiments can be done over the packets to see if these semi active components exist. Another aim would be to create some code that

Hugo Bertin

Hugo is a Visiting Student from the University of Rennes, France. He is interested in the network and system aspects inherent in distributed systems, which often involve a trade-off between security and performance. He joined the SeRBER research group to work on EGaming Security under the supervision of Professor Marc Dacier. The research project aims to investigate the security aspects leveraged by the gaming industry, which experienced unprecedented growth, especially with the surge of Esports and is expected to continue to shape tomorrow's virtual worlds. Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Hadeel A. Ameen

Hadeel is an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech, USA. She is pursuing a computer science B.S. degree minoring in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). She joined the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) led by Professor Charalambos (Harrys) Konstantinou as a Saudi Summer Internship (SSI) student. Hadeel is interested in cybersecurity and machine learning which allowed to enhance both her knowledge and experience in the uses and applications of different fields of computer science.

Erick Rodrigues E Silva

Education Erick pursued his education in Control and Automation Engineering at CEFET-RJ, where he was awarded a Motion of Praise for his victory in a national robotics championship. He authored a thesis titled "Platform for Simulation and Generation of Synthetic Data for Autonomous Inspections by UAVS in Solar Plants." Experience During the thesis composition, Erick made a significant contribution to the paper "Virtual Reality Simulation of Autonomous Solar Plant Inspections with Unmanned Aerial Systems." This paper was published at ICUAS, a conference held in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2021. After

Elisa Chiapponi

I am currently a PhD student in Digital Security enrolled in the Sorbonne Université. I work on my research project at EURECOM and Amadeus, under the supervision of prof. Marc Dacier at KAUST My areas of interest include Network and Web security. My thesis focuses on the analysis and mitigation of the new generation of botnets, in particular the ones performing web scraping. My goal is to find practical means to defeat them. The starting point of my project is understanding the ecosystem of scraping bots. This consists of identifying the actors behind this business and their motivations

Charalambos (Harrys) Konstantinou

Professor Konstantinou is an expert in critical infrastructure security and resilience, focusing on smart grid technology, renewable energy integration and real-time simulation.

Ali M. AlFarhan

Ali Alfarhan is an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. He is studying computer science with a minor in game design. Ali joined the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) led by Professor Charalambos (Harrys) Konstantinou as a KAUST Gifted Student Program (KGSP) student, with interest in cybersecurity and optimization.

Alya AlShaikh

Alya AlShaikh is currently an undergraduate student at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, KSA. She is pursuing a Software Engineering BSc specializing in Cyber Security and Machine Learning. Alya joined the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Lab (SENTRY) led by Professor Konstantinou as an Accelerated Bachelor’s and Master's (ABM) student. Her research interests include applying machine learning techniques to enhance cyber defense strategies.

Ali Shoker

Senior Research Scientist, Computer Science
I am a Senior Staff Scientist, working on Cyber Security and Resilience. My research is focused on studying and using Byzantine and Intrusion Fault tolerance, Hardware (FPGA), Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain, for critical applications like Autonomous Vehicles, Small Satellite constellations, SOC, and Fintech. I love and plan to build practical things that manifest in the society.

Abdallah Al-Moubayed

MS Degree , Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering ,King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) .Now Abdallah is Visiting Student to (KAUST)