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At least 37 records · Page 2

Cognitive Computing for Security.

Final report for Cognitive Computing for Security LDRD 165613. It reports on the development of hybrid of general purpose/ne uromorphic computer architecture, with an emphasis on potential implementation with memristors.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Computer-implemented security evaluation methods, security evaluation systems, and articles of manufacture

Computer-implemented security evaluation methods, security evaluation systems, and articles of manufacture are described. According to one aspect, a computer-implemented security evaluation method includes accessing information regarding a physical architecture and a cyber architecture of a facility, building a model of the facility comprising a plurality of physical areas of the physical architecture, a plurality of cyber areas of the cyber architecture, and a plurality of pathways between the physical areas and the cyber areas, identifying a target within the facility, executing the model a plurality of times to simulate a plurality of attacks against the target by an adversary traversing at least one of the areas in the physical domain and at least one of the areas in the cyber domain, and using results of the executing, providing information regarding a security risk of the facility with respect to the target.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An operation verification strategy against network attack of DCS in nuclear power plant - 323

Digital Instrumentation and control (I and C) system serves as the 'senses and nervous system' of a nuclear power plant (NPP). It plays an important role in the safe and economic operation in the NPPs. Digital I and C system has a series of advantages compared with analogue ones, but the introduction of the operation system platform, the application software, and the network communication structure are causing security risk to the power plant. Different kinds of procedures have already been adopted against these risks such as the communication isolation, but the security attacks still occur from time to time in the industrial fields around the world. This paper presents two computer security methods based on the thought of software verification and validation with step-by-step operation identification. First, three scenarios of security attack are proposed according to the structure of a distributed control system (DCS). Then a method with two network bypasses and a security computer are adopted to obtain the operation commands, the actuation signal, and the operation feedback in case of the first two scenarios by identifying the consistency of the obtained data. Furthermore, the method is optimized by combining the operation procedure and the camera shot to identify the anomaly of the information flow, thus to improve the effectiveness against the computer security issues. In the end, the influence and feasibility of this method is discussed. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

IMPLEMENTING CYBERSECURITY INTO AN EXISTING NATIONAL NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION PROGRAMME – A CASE STUDY

Cyber threat profiling and risk mitigation is critical to any nuclear state organization and should be considered as part of any comprehensive nuclear security programme. Defining and evaluating the impact of the cyber threat to mission can be challenging. An existing national nuclear non-proliferation organization undertook an effort to incorporate computer security activities into its programme to address cyber risk. One of the primary goals of this endeavour was to develop a set of prioritised recommendations for organizational follow-through. The organization dedicated subject matter expert resources in the form of a cyber task force to support this goal. Opportunities were identified where computer security could be built into each programme including office-level strategies and tools. Of course, no new identified threat vector is easily considered and incorporated into existing programmes without impact. There are many obstacles to be overcome. Technically literate subject matter experts are difficult to find, management has comparatively less experience applying computer security into its programmes, and trying to change the culture to consider computer security risk at policy and programmatic levels takes time and management attention. As an outcome of this process, a roadmap for program integration was developed, including the establishment of a cyber support team. This paper will discuss the challenges and successes associated with establishing such a team.

Cyber Security, Nuclear, Non-proliferation↗

Adapting Secure MultiParty Computation to Support Machine Learning in Radio Frequency Sensor Networks

In this project we developed and validated algorithms for privacy-preserving linear regression using a new variant of Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC) we call "Hybrid MPC" (hMPC). Our variant is intended to support low-power, unreliable networks of sensors with low-communication, fault-tolerant algorithms. In hMPC we do not share training data, even via secret sharing. Thus, agents are responsible for protecting their own local data. Only the machine learning (ML) model is protected with information-theoretic security guarantees against honest-but-curious agents. There are three primary advantages to this approach: (1) after setup, hMPC supports a communication-efficient matrix multiplication primitive, (2) organizations prevented by policy or technology from sharing any of their data can participate as agents in hMPC, and (3) large numbers of low-power agents can participate in hMPC. We have also created an open-source software library named "Cicada" to support hMPC applications with fault-tolerance. The fault-tolerance is important in our applications because the agents are vulnerable to failure or capture. We have demonstrated this capability at Sandia's Autonomy New Mexico laboratory through a simple machine-learning exercise with Raspberry Pi devices capturing and classifying images while flying on four drones.

42 ENGINEERING↗

CS651 Computer Systems Security Foundations 3d Imagination Cyber Security Management Plan

3d Imagination is a new company that bases its business on selling and improving 3d open source related hardware. The devices that they sell include 3d imagers, 3d printers, pick and place machines and laser etchers. They have a fast company intranet for ease in sharing, storing and printing large, complex 3d designs. They have an employee set that requires a variety of operating systems including Windows, Mac and a variety of Linux both for running business services as well as design and test machines. There are a wide variety of private networks for testing transfer rates to and from the 3d devices, without interference with other network tra c. They do video conferencing conferencing with customers and other designers. One of their machines is based on the project found at delta.firepick.org(Krassenstein, 2014; Biggs, 2014), which in future, will perform most of those functions. Their devices all include embedded systems, that may have full blown operating systems. Most of their systems are designed to have swappable parts, so when a new technology is born, it can be quickly adopted by people with 3d Imagination hardware. This company is producing a fair number of systems and components, however to get the funding they need to mass produce quality parts, so they are preparing for an IPO to raise the funds they need. They would like to have a cyber-security audit performed so they can give their investors con dence that they are protecting their data, customers information and printers in a proactive manner.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Privacy Preserving Federated Learning for Advanced Scientific Ecosystems

We present a framework to provide privacy preserving (PP) federating learning (FL) across multiple computational and experimental facilities. This work joins the compute capabilities of National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Research Cloud (ORC) with simulated experimental data, such as those produced at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). We describe the software infrastructure developed to provide privacy for computational and experimental networks. We developed algorithmic privacy across the federated system by embedding database security, computation, and communication into the federation architecture, utilizing scientific tools developed by the experimental community.

Archibald, Rick [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000245389780)↗

Genesis Mission-Enabled Secure AI to Fortify Energy Process Safety (Genesis-SAFE)

Argonne National Laboratory is supporting the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT’s) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) with collaborative research on development and application of privacy preserving AI frameworks that leverage unmatched AI expertise and secure computing resources made available through the U.S. Genesis Mission1 . This research advances U.S. energy security goals by supporting a safe offshore energy industry with secure, domain-specific AI tools to analyze confidential industry datasets collected by BTS to rapidly improve identification of hazards, precursors, and systemic safety risks in high-risk operational environments. The staged, security-first approach begins with development and testing of Argonne’s Genesis Mission-enabled Secure AI to Fortify Energy Process Safety (Genesis-SAFE) framework within Argonne’s accredited secure computing enclave (ABLE) leveraging Argonne’s AI scientific assistant substrate (AISAC). Methods to build synthetic datasets were developed together with BTS for use in preparing synthetic datasets that can be used to validate data containment, governance, and security controls in the ABLE environment. Future research directions would focus on applying the Genesis-SAFE framework to CIPSEA-protected datasets entirely within ABLE to support confidentiality-preserving analysis of safety risks, trends, and contributing factors.

Kim, Hyekyung [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), ↗

Tunable stochastic memristors for energy-efficient encryption and computing

Information security and computing, two critical technological challenges for post-digital computation, pose opposing requirements – security (encryption) requires a source of unpredictability, while computing generally requires predictability. Each of these contrasting requirements presently necessitates distinct conventional Si-based hardware units with power-hungry overheads. This work demonstrates Cu 0.3 Te 0.7 /HfO 2 (‘CuTeHO’) ion-migration-driven memristors that satisfy the contrasting requirements. Under specific operating biases, CuTeHO memristors generate truly random and physically unclonable functions, while under other biases, they perform universal Boolean logic. Using these computing primitives, this work experimentally demonstrates a single system that performs cryptographic key generation, universal Boolean logic operations, and encryption/decryption. Circuit-based calculations reveal the energy and latency advantages of the CuTeHO memristors in these operations. This work illustrates the functional flexibility of memristors in implementing operations with varying component-level requirements.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

On the operational meaning and practical aspects of using the security parameter in quantum key distribution

We discuss the operational meaning of a commonly accepted security parameter in quantum key distribution, which is based on the trace distance. We separately consider the cases of using a key in a one-time pad and in a computationally secure cipher. Some practical aspects of using the security parameter are also elucidated, which are usually not paid enough attention in theoretical studies and which therefore may cause difficulties for experimentalists and engineers. It is shown that a one-time pad requires not only a higher key generation rate than computationally secure ciphers, but also a significantly stronger condition on the key security parameter. (paper)

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cybervulnerability Impact Assessment for Energy Critical Infrastructure

As energy infrastructure becomes more interconnected, understanding cybersecurity risks to production systems requires integrating operational and computer security knowledge. We interviewed 18 experts working in the field of energy critical infrastructure to compare what information they find necessary to assess the impact of computer vulnerabilities on energy operational technology. These experts came from two groups: 1) computer security experts and 2) energy sector operations experts. We find that both groups responded similarly for general categories of information and displayed knowledge about both domains, perhaps due to their interdisciplinary work at the same organization. Yet, their discussion of each group’s domain-specific training, motivations, and limitations, as well as their suggestions for collaboration across domains, highlighted how these two groups can work together to help each other secure the energy grid. Our findings inform the development of interdisciplinary security approaches in critical-infrastructure contexts.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cyber-vulnerability Impact Assessment for Energy Critical Infrastructure

As energy infrastructure becomes more interconnected, understanding cybersecurity risks to production systems requires integrating operational and computer security knowledge. We interviewed 18 experts working in the field of energy critical infrastructure to compare what information they find necessary to assess the impact of computer vulnerabilities on energy operational technology. These experts came from two groups: 1) computer security experts and 2) energy sector operations experts. We find that both groups responded similarly for general categories of information and displayed knowledge about both domains, perhaps due to their interdisciplinary work at the same organization. Yet, we found notable differences in the details of their responses and in their stated perceptions of each group’s approaches to impact assessment. Their suggestions for collaboration across domains highlighted how these two groups can work together to help each other secure the energy grid. Our findings inform the development of interdisciplinary security approaches in critical-infrastructure contexts.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗