Engineering topics
Walsh, Sarah
Publications and source records attributed to Walsh, Sarah.
GPLADD: Quantifying Trust in Government and Commercial Systems A Game-Theoretic Approach
Trust in a microelectronics-based system can be characterized as the level of confidence that a system is free of subversive alterations made during system development, or that the development process of a system has not been manipulated by a malicious adversary. Trust in systems has become an increasing concern over the past decade. This report introduces a novel game-theoretic framework, called GPLADD (Graph-based Probabilistic Learning Attacker and Dynamic Defender), for analyzing and quantifying system trustworthiness at the end of the development process, through the analysis of risk of development-time system manipulation. GPLADD represents attacks and attacker-defender contests over time. Here, time is an explicit constraint and allows incorporating the informational asymmetries between the attacker and defender into analysis. GPLADD includes an explicit representation of attack steps via multi-step attack graphs, attacker and defender strategies, and player actions at different times. GPLADD allows quantifying the attack success probability over time and the attacker and defender costs based on their capabilities and strategies. This ability to quantify different attacks provides an input for evaluation of trust in the development process. We demonstrate GPLADD on an example attack and its variants. We develop a method for representing success probability for arbitrary attacks and derive an explicit analytic characterization of success probability for a specific attack. We present a numeric Monte Carlo study of a small set of attacks, quantify attack success probabilities, attacker and defender costs, and illustrate the options the defender has for limiting the attack success and improving trust in the development process.
A Grid Modernization Approach for Community Resilience: Application to New Orleans, LA
This report describes the application of an approach for determining grid modernization investments that can best improve the resilience of communities. Under the direction of the US Department of Energy's Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos) collaborated with community stakeholders in New Orleans, Louisiana on grid modernization strategies for resilience. Past disruptions to the electric grid in New Orleans have contributed to an inability to provide citizens with adequate access to a wide range of infrastructure services. Using a performance-based resilience metric, Sandia and Los Alamos performed analysis on how to improve access to infrastructure services across New Orleans after a major disruption using a system of resilience nodes. Resilience nodes rely on a combination of urban planning with grid investment planning for resilience in order to design clustered infrastructure assets with highly resilient electrical supply. Results of the analysis led to suggestion of 22 draft resilience node locations that can provide a wide range of infrastructure services equitably to New Orleans citizens. This report serves as a proof-of-concept for the Urban Resilience Planning Process, and describes several gaps that should be overcome in order to integrate resilience planning between electric utilities and local governments.
PRESTIGE: Practical Evaluation and Synthesis of Trust in Government Systems.
Abstract not provided.
Next Generation Life Support (NGLS): High Performance EVA Glove (HPEG) Technology Development Element
The overall objective is to develop advanced gloves for extra vehicular activity (EVA) for future human space exploration missions and generate corresponding standards by which progress may be quantitatively assessed. The glove prototypes that result from the successful completion of this technology development activity will be delivered to NASA's Human Exploration Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and ultimately to be included in an integrated test with the next generation spacesuit currently under development.