Nuclear Security: Threat Characterization Worksheets
This report is a worksheet for capturing the capabilities and attributes of threat data.
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Nuclear Security: Threat Data 08-20-13
This report describes the capabilities and attributes of threat data.
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
Antigovernment Groups. A Growing Threat to US Security
Domestic terrorism is a growing threat in the United States, particularly from the 998 right-wing antigovernment (AG) groups in existence in 2015. In the years since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, right-wing anti-government acts have oc- curred more often and killed more people in the United States than Muslim extremists. Such AG group members are often in uenced by racist, anti-Semitic, or anti-Islamic views, believe conspiracy theories about the government, and often refuse to pay taxes or participate in frivolous lawsuits in order to intentionally waste the government's time. There is, however, a violent element to these groups which participates in events ranging from the armed take-over of federal land in Oregon, to an armed stand-o with federal agents in Nevada, to the bombing of the Oklahoma City building which killed 168 people. Such acts may be conducted by a few individuals, as is the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, or an entire group. Such groups have a wide range of capabilities, with typical weapons including legal and illegal rearms, with a focus on purchasing fully automatic weapons; hand grenades, with some homemade; deadly tox- ins, like ricin (in multiple cases) and sodium cyanide (in one case); transportation, such as all-terrain vehicles (ATVs); arson, with the intent of destroying federal property; and explosives, often in large numbers and including pipe bombs, truck bombs, IEDs, and other homemade explosives. The growing acceptance of these violent methods by Republican congressmen and governors, however, only increases visibility of such groups and encourages their behavior. Coupled with the removal of the Department of Homeland Security's division responsible for monitoring such groups, the result could prove disastrous for the safety of United States citizens.
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Web-based Decision-Support Tools for Investigating Infectious Disease Threats [Slides]
This presentation describes various biosurrveillance tools used to investigate infectious disease threats.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Redefining Maritime Security Threats in the Eastern Indian Ocean Region.
This occasional paper analyzes the general security issues and trends relating to maritime trafficking of radiological and nuclear material using small vessels, minor ports, and unchecked areas of coastline existing in the Eastern Indian Ocean Region today. By the Eastern Indian Ocean Region is meant the area starting from the tip of the Indian peninsula in the west to the Straits of Malacca in the east. It lays focus on the potential sources of nuclear or radiological material that may be trafficked here. It further undertakes a study of the terrorist groups active in the region as well as the multinational or national interdiction organizations that have been created to counter maritime threats. It also seeks to discern the various technologies for detecting materials of concern available in the area. Finally, it ascertains possible methods and technologies to improve the maritime security system in the region.
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
Vehicle Cybersecurity Threats and Mitigation Approaches
Federal fleet managers and the information technology teams working with them need to understand the threats associated with modern vehicles. As vehicles become safer overall, the dangers change from distracted drivers to privacy intrusion and compromised operation. While fleet managers cannot necessarily change the configurations of manufacturer settings in mass market vehicles, they can influence what protective measures are taken in supplemental equipment or pilot-project vehicles. This report identifies security concerns, mitigation techniques, and procurement language that may be applicable in certain cases.
33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
Phase I Closeout Report: Invoking Artificial Neural Networks to Measure Insider Threat Mitigation
Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT) conducted this study to explore the effectiveness of commercial artificial neural network (ANN) software to improve insider threat detection and mitigation (ITDM). This study hypothesized that ANNs could be "trainee to learn patterns of organizational behaviors, detect off-normal (or anomalous) deviations from these patterns, and alert when certain types, frequencies, or quantities of deviations emerge. The ReconaSense ANN system was installed at UT's Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory (NETL) and collected 13,653 access control data points and 694 intrusion sensor data points over a three-month period. Preliminary analysis of this baseline data demonstrated regularized patterns of life in the facility, and that off-normal behaviors are detectable under certain situations -- even for a facility with anticipated highly non-routine, operational behaviors. Completion of this pilot study demonstrated how the ReconaSense ANN could be used to identify expected operational patterns and detect unexpected anomalous behaviors in support of a data-analytic approach to ITDM. While additional studies are needed to fully understand and characterize this system, the results of this initial study are overall very promising for demonstrating a new framework for ITDM utilizing ANNs and data analysis techniques.
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
Integrated Air Activity Derived Response Levels for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Air Monitoring Stations
This report was developed to help the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency understand the radionuclide detection requirements necessary to establish air monitoring systems that can detect airborne radionuclide activity at levels that could warrant protective actions.. The report provides representative integrated air activity derived response levels that correspond to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's protective action guidelines for the Early Phase (0-96 h) following a release to the environment. Environmental releases from nuclear fallout, nuclear power plants, and radiological dispersal devices are considered.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
International Radiological/Nuclear Training for Emergency Response - Major Public Events Virtual Workshop: Major Public Events Overview and Nuclear Security Threats (Day 1) [Slides]
The International Radiological/Nuclear Training for Emergency Response - Major Public Event (IRAD-MPE) Virtual Workshop is an advanced training course designed to provide international partners with specialized training on best practices for conducting nuclear security planning and operations at a Major Public Event. This presentation will provide an overview of the following: (1) Historical perspective on past MPE events, (2) National strategy and integrated security operations, (3) Best practices for nuclear security operations, (4) Radiological/nuclear threats and common alarms, (5) Lessons Learned and Challenges, and (5) IAEA NSS-18 publication: Nuclear Security Systems and Measures for Major Public Events.
61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
Advanced Grid Operational Technology Edge-Level Threat Detection
This report presents a deployable solution to improve the cybersecurity situational awareness of the legacy SCADA system infrastructure in power grids. The main goal of this project is to provide system owners and operators a highly trusted, intelligent alarm system and comprehensive situational awareness of ongoing or potential cybersecurity threats on the grid network. The key contributions of this project include: (1) the development of software, the Intrusion Detection Visualizer for the Operational Technology Network (IViz-OT), to visualize and locate intrusions on the grid network; (2) testing the signature-based Hybrid Intrusion Detection for Energy Systems (HIDES) for different types of intrusions; (3) the integration of HIDES and IViz-OT into the visualization dashboard; and (4) real-time testing using a hardware-in-the-loop test bed.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Explosives Threat Assessment Working Group Terminology
This document contains a summary list of definitions for distribution to sites working with and working within the Department of Homeland Security’s Explosives Threat Assessment working group. The purpose of this list is to provide a unified framework for discussion between the various collaborating teams.
42 ENGINEERING↗
Threat Sources for Creating Synthetic Urban Search Data
Equivalent point source energy emission distributions were computed for various threat sources for use in simulating the detector responses for urban search scenarios. The sources include standard isotopic sources used in detector testing, medical and industrial sources occasionally encountered in urban searches, and several types of special nuclear materials. Most of the equivalent point source distributions represent small sources inside some amount of shielding, but the special nuclear material sources represent volumetrically distributed sources in spheres of metal. Text-based inputs for emission distributions are available for the Monte Carlo transport codes Monte Carlo N-Particle, SCALE/MAVRIC, and Omnibus/Shift, any of which can easily be converted to other formats. These sources were developed for use in the Radiological Anomaly Detection and Identification (RADAI) project and the follow-on project, the RADAI-Extended project, sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development.
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
Real-time evaluation of cybersecurity threats to DER inverter grid-support functions
In this project we aim to contribute to the understanding of the type and severity of potential cybersecurity attacks to the grid-support functionalities of DER systems interconnected to the AC distribution grid via inverters. Our preliminary work focused on developing a small-scale testbed allowing to study cybersecurity threats to an isolated photovoltaic-battery system using a real-time simulator (Typhoon HIL602+) with a real DNP3 communication connection over TCP/IP, allowing for safe and efficient monitoring and manipulation of data traffic between the simulated hardware and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. In this project we propose to expand upon this development by utilizing a) a recently acquired NovaCor RTDS (Real Rime digital Simulator) to emulate the DER-inverter-grid topology including main grid-support functions as defined by IEEE Std. 1547-2018, and b) an industrial control and automation device to enable realistic evaluation of control functions and utilization of communication protocols for real-time data transmission.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) Cyber Range Overview and Threat-to-Consequence Demonstration
This presentation was presented at the Aggregation and Grid Security Workshop - held on June 17-18, 2025, at NREL in Golden, Colorado. The goal of the two-day workshop was to address the critical cybersecurity challenges for the future electric grid. The threat-to-consequence demonstration showcases NREL's capability to model, simulate, test, and evaluate cyberattacks targeting energy systems that coincide with natural hazards, as well as the ramifications for the energy grid as a whole.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Advancing INFCIRC/908 Insider Threat Mitigation International Working Group: Activity Roadmap, 2025-2027
This 2-year work plan provides a roadmap for activities the IWG and other stakeholders will undertake between 2025 and 2027. Members of the IWG Steering Committee (SC) are responsible to (1) engage the broader insider threat mitigation community of practice to inform and promote work plan activities, (2) track progress towards goals, and (3) provide updates to the IWG at regular intervals. This work plan is a living document and will be updated periodically to assess progress towards goals and will be revised as needed to address emergent and exigent areas of concern identified by the IWG.
45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
Using Large Language Models to help customers monitor global threat data
Large Language Models have proven adept at answering general knowledge questions. To make these generative AI tools useful to our mission customers for monitoring global threats, the data sciences team at Sandia is utilizing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques to customize these models with local data. The local data we use consists of data such as research articles and patent abstracts that we've collected over the last several years using automated pipelines.
Herzer, John Andrew [Sandia National Laboratories ↗
The IEC 61850 Sampled Measured Values Protocol: Analysis, Threat Identification, and Feasibility of Using NN Forecasters to Detect Spoofed Packets
The operation of the smart grid is anticipated to rely profoundly on distributed microprocessor-based control. Therefore, interoperability standards are needed to address the heterogeneous nature of the smart grid data. Since the IEC 61850 emerged as a wide-spread interoperability standard widely accepted by the industry, the Sampled Measured Values method has been used to communicate digitized voltage and current measurements. Realizing that current and voltage measurements (i.e., feedback measurements) are necessary for reliable and secure noperation of the power grid, firstly, this manuscript provides a detailed analysis of the Sampled Measured Values protocol emphasizing its advantages, then, it identifies vulnerabilities in this protocol and explains the cyber threats associated to these vulnerabilities. Secondly, current efforts to mitigate these vulnerabilities are outlined and the feasibility of using neural network forecasters to detect spoofed sampled values is investigated. It was shown that although such forecasters have high spoofed data detection accuracy, they are prone to the accumulation of forecasting error. Accordingly, this paper also proposes an algorithm to detect the accumulation of the forecasting error based on lightweight statistical indicators. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is experimentally verified in a laboratory-scale smart grid testbed.
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
F-106 data summary and model results relative to threat criteria and protection design analysis
The NASA F-106 has acquired considerable data on the rates-of-change of electromagnetic parameters on the aircraft surface during 690 direct lightning strikes while penetrating thunderstorms at altitudes ranging from 15,000 to 40,000 feet. These in-situ measurements have provided the basis for the first statistical quantification of the lightning electromagnetic threat to aircrat appropriate for determining lightning indirect effects on aircraft. The data are presently being used in updating previous lightning criteria and standards developed over the years from ground-based measurements. The new lightning standards will, therefore, be the first which reflect actual aircraft responses measured at flight altitudes. The modeling technique developed to interpret and understand the direct strike electromagnetic data acquired on the F-106 provides a means to model the interaction of the lightning channel with the F-106. The reasonable results obtained with the model, compared to measured responses, yield confidence that the model may be credibly applied to other aircraft types and uses in the prediction of internal coupling effects in the design of lightning protection for new aircraft.
Pitts, F. L.↗