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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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At least 397 records · Page 22
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1998

Practical Computer Security through Cryptography

The core protocols upon which the Internet was built are insecure. Weak authentication and the lack of low level encryption services introduce vulnerabilities that propagate upwards in the network stack. Using statistics based on CERT/CC Internet security incident reports, the relative likelihood of attacks via these vulnerabilities is analyzed. The primary conclusion is that the standard UNIX BSD-based authentication system is by far the most commonly exploited weakness. Encryption of Sensitive password data and the adoption of cryptographically-based authentication protocols can greatly reduce these vulnerabilities. Basic cryptographic terminology and techniques are presented, with attention focused on the ways in which technology such as encryption and digital signatures can be used to protect against the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities. A survey of contemporary security software demonstrates that tools based on cryptographic techniques, such as Kerberos, ssh, and PGP, are readily available and effectively close many of the most serious security holes. Nine practical recommendations for improving security are described.

McNab, David↗
DOE OSTI2020

Tribal Colleges and Universities/Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (Q3 FY2020 Progress Report)

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) initiated the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Plan (MSIPP) to 1) align investments in a university capacity and workforce development with the NNSA mission to develop the needed skills and talent for NNSA's enduring technical workforce at the laboratories and production plants, and 2) to enhance research and education at under-represented colleges and universities. Out of this effort, MSIPP launched a new consortium in early FY17 focused on Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) known as the Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (AMNI). This consortium has been extended for FY20 and FY21. The following report summarizes the status update during this quarter.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Tribal Colleges and Universities/Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (Q4 FY2020 Progress Report)

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) initiated the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Plan (MSIPP) to 1) align investments in a university capacity and workforce development with the NNSA mission to develop the needed skills and talent for NNSA’s enduring technical workforce at the laboratories and production plants, and 2) to enhance research and education at under-represented colleges and universities. Out of this effort, MSIPP launched a new consortium in early FY17 focused on Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) known as the Advanced Manufacturing Network Initiative (AMNI). This consortium has been extended for FY20 and FY21. The following report summarizes the status update during this quarter.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Machine Learning-based Intrusion Detection for Smart Grid Computing: A Survey

Machine learning (ML)-based intrusion detection system (IDS) approaches have been significantly applied and advanced the state-of-the-art system security and defense mechanisms. In smart grid computing environments, security threats have been significantly increased as shared networks are commonly used, along with the associated vulnerabilities. However, compared to other network environments, ML-based IDS research in a smart grid is relatively unexplored, although the smart grid environment is facing serious security threats due to its unique environmental vulnerabilities. In this article, we conducted an extensive survey on ML-based IDS in smart grids based on the following key aspects: (1) The applications of the ML-based IDS in transmission and distribution side power components of a smart power grid by addressing its security vulnerabilities; (2) dataset generation process and its usage in applying ML-based IDSs in the smart grid; (3) a wide range of ML-based IDSs used by the surveyed papers in the smart grid environment; (4) metrics, complexity analysis, and evaluation testbeds of the IDSs applied in the smart grid; and (5) lessons learned, insights, and future research directions.

SCADA↗
NASA NTRS2004

Tools for Administration of a UNIX-Based Network

Several computer programs have been developed to enable efficient administration of a large, heterogeneous, UNIX-based computing and communication network that includes a variety of computers connected to a variety of subnetworks. One program provides secure software tools for administrators to create, modify, lock, and delete accounts of specific users. This program also provides tools for users to change their UNIX passwords and log-in shells. These tools check for errors. Another program comprises a client and a server component that, together, provide a secure mechanism to create, modify, and query quota levels on a network file system (NFS) mounted by use of the VERITAS File SystemJ software. The client software resides on an internal secure computer with a secure Web interface; one can gain access to the client software from any authorized computer capable of running web-browser software. The server software resides on a UNIX computer configured with the VERITAS software system. Directories where VERITAS quotas are applied are NFS-mounted. Another program is a Web-based, client/server Internet Protocol (IP) address tool that facilitates maintenance lookup of information about IP addresses for a network of computers.

LeClaire, Stephen↗
DOE OSTI2025

Towards an IPv6-only WLCG: More successes in reducing IPv4

The Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG) community’s deployment of dual-stack IPv6/IPv4 on its worldwide storage infrastructure has been very successful. Dual-stack is not, however, a viable longterm solution; the HEPiX IPv6 Working Group has focused on studying where and why IPv4 is still being used, and how to flip such traffic to IPv6. The agreed end goal is to turn IPv4 off and run IPv6-only over the wide-area network to simplify both operations and security management.This paper reports our work since the CHEP2023 conference. Firstly, we present our campaign to deploy IPv6 on CPU services and Worker Nodes, with a deadline of end of June 2024. Then, the WLCG Data Challenge (DC24) performed in February 2024 was an excellent opportunity to observe the percentage of data transfers carried by IPv6. We observed the predominance of IPv6 in data transfers during DC24 and were able to understand yet more reasons for the use of IPv4 and areas for remedial action.The paper ends with the working group’s plans for moving WLCG to “IPv6- only”. One aspect of this is the possible automated use of IPv6-only clients configured with a customer-side translator, or CLAT, together with a deployment of NAT64 using what is often known as “IPv6-Mostly”, enabling IPv6-only sites to connect to non-WLCG IPv4-only services.

Attebury, Garhan [U. Nebraska, Lincoln]↗
DOE OSTI2021

Distributed ADMM Using Private Blockchain for Power Flow Optimization in Distribution Network With Coupled and Mixed-Integer Constraints

The optimization problem for scheduling distributed energy resources (DERs) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) integrated with the power grid is important to minimize energy consumption from conventional sources in response to demand. Conventionally this optimization problem is solved in a centralized manner, limiting the size of the problem that can be solved and creating a high communication overhead because all the data is transferred to the central controller. These limitations are addressed by the proposed distributed consensus-based alternating direction method of multiplier (DC-ADMM) optimization algorithm, which decomposes the optimization problem into subproblems with private cost function and constraints. The distribution feeder is partitioned into low coupling subnetworks/regions, which solves the private subproblem locally and exchanges information with the neighboring regions to reach consensus. The relaxation strategy is employed for mixed-integer and coupled constraints introduced in the optimal power flow (OPF) problem by stationary and transportable BESS because DC-ADMM convergence is only guaranteed for strict convex problems. The information exchange and synchronization between subnetworks/regions are vital for distributed optimization. In this work, both of these aspects are addressed by the blockchain. The smart contract deployed on the blockchain network acts as a mediator for secure data exchange and synchronization in distributed computation. The blockchain-based distributed optimization problem’s effectiveness is tested for a 0.5-MW laboratory microgrid for one hour ahead and day-ahead for the IEEE 123-bus and EPRI J1 test feeders, and results are compared with a centralized solution.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Feature Engineering and Ensemble Methods for Imbalanced ICS Intrusion Detection: Pipeline Audit and Constrained Evaluation

Industries are becoming increasingly connected and are more vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the widened attack surface. Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are among the most critical sectors that malicious actors can target, as such attacks can cause significant operational disruption and physical damage. It is imperative to detect such attacks as early as possible. This paper evaluates constraint-conditioned optimistic performance estimates for traditional ML models in ICS intrusion detection (i.e., estimates obtained under contiguous, non-shuffled temporal evaluation without test-set alteration, but with pre-split feature engineering that may introduce temporal leakage, due to dataset constraints). Our findings are threefold. First, we quantify how iterative feature engineering affects tree-based ensemble performance and examine how pipeline decisions (split strategy, sampling scope, and cleaning policy) can inflate or reduce reported IDS results under constraint-bound evaluation. Second, we compare intrinsic class-imbalance handling across ensemble models. Third, under our current pipeline constraints (including pre-split feature engineering), CatBoost achieves the best performance on Water Storage Tank (accuracy: 0.9831, class-1 F1: 0.9682), while Light- GBM achieves the best performance on Gas Pipeline (accuracy: 0.9618, class-1 F1: 0.9086).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

The Impact of Time-Aware Design Choices in ICS Anomaly Detection

Industrial control systems (ICS) remain vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, yet evaluating anomaly detection models in these environments is challenging due to temporal dependencies, missing-not-at-random patterns, and extremely imbalanced datasets. These factors make common practices—especially random data splits and na¨ıve imputation— prone to severe temporal leakage, which can inflate reported performance and obscure real-world limitations. In this work, we systematically examine classical machine learning models, temporal deep learning architecture, and tensordecomposition– based methods on a gas-pipeline dataset using a fully temporally separated evaluation pipeline designed to mimic realistic deployment conditions. Our findings show that proper temporal handling and MNAR-aware preprocessing significantly alter the relative performance of popular anomaly-detection methods, providing practical guidance for designing reliable, leakage-resistant ICS intrusion-detection systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

pseudopod

Pseudopod is a software tool that makes it easier and safer to build and run Linux containers without needing additional system privileges. It is designed to work with the open-soruce Podman container runtime. Pseudopod also provides and implements small library named libpseudo that provides the core functionality for tracking and emulating identity related system calls with low performance overhead. This allows complex tools, such as package managers and build systems, to run in a familiar way within a container while preserving the security of the host system and networks.

Green, ElenaN [Lawrence Livermore National Laborat↗
DOE OSTI2020

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) on Opportunistic Networks_ A Feasibility Study Utilizing Fiber Optic Infrastructure at NEON Sites for DAS

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) on the opportunistic optical fiber infrastructure presented by NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) sites. The test took place at the NEON Terrestrial Site designated D10 CPER. Unlit portions of the local fiber network were successfully spliced together and optimized for length and a Silixa iDAS sensor was installed. The resulting array (composed of 12 spliced fiber runs) totaled 875m in length. Over a period of 2 weeks, we gathered a high spatial and temporal resolution data set to characterize discernable signals and understand background noise. The data set was reviewed to extract wave signatures of identifiable origin, both anthropogenic and otherwise. Continent wide distribution of these sites makes them an interesting candidate for DAS and identifying measurable signal sources informs future DAS application on opportunistic fiber networks. These observations validate the utility of both the NEON and similarly small fiber networks (<1km) for geoscience, environmental, and security DAS applications and indicate possibilities for further inquiry in methods for DAS data collection and analysis.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Standards Development [Final Report]

Currently, the solar industry is operating with little application-specific guidance on how to protect and defend their systems from cyberattacks. This 3-year Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office-funded project helped advance the distributed energy resource (DER) cybersecurity state-of-the-art by (a) bolstering industry awareness of cybersecurity concepts, risks, and solutions through a webinar series and (b) developing recommendations for DER cybersecurity standards to improve the security performance of DER products and networks. Drafting DER standards is a lengthy, consensus-based process requiring effective leadership and stakeholder participation. This project was designed to reduce standard and guide writing times by creating well-researched recommendations that could act as a starting place for national and international standards development organizations. Working within the SunSpec/Sandia DER Cybersecurity Workgroup, the team produced guidance for DER cybersecurity certification, communication protocol standards, network architecture s, access control, and patching. The team also led subgroups within the IEEE P 1547.3 Guide for Cybersecurity of Distributed Energy Resources Interconnected with Electric Power Systems committee and pushed a draft to ballot in October 2021.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1997

Emergency Operations Center at Johnson Space Center

In June 1966, at the start of the Gulf Coast hurricane season, the Johnson Space Center (JSC) celebrated the opening of its new 4,000-square foot, state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center (EOC). The new EOC has been upgraded and enhanced to support a wide spectrum of emergencies affecting JSC and neighboring communities. One of the main features of the EOC is its premier computerized dispatch center. The new system unites many of JSC's critical emergency functions into one integrated network. It automatically monitors fire alarms, security entrances, and external cameras. It contains the JSC inventory of hazardous materials, by building and room, and can call up Material Safety Data Sheets for most of the generic hazardous materials used on-site. The EOC is available for community use during area emergencies such as hurricanes and is a welcome addition to the Clear Lake/Galveston Bay Area communities' emergency response resources.

Caylor, Gary C.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Automated Euler and Navier-Stokes Database Generation for a Glide-Back Booster

The past two decades have seen a sustained increase in the use of high fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in basic research, aircraft design, and the analysis of post-design issues. As the fidelity of a CFD method increases, the number of cases that can be readily and affordably computed greatly diminishes. However, computer speeds now exceed 2 GHz, hundreds of processors are currently available and more affordable, and advances in parallel CFD algorithms scale more readily with large numbers of processors. All of these factors make it feasible to compute thousands of high fidelity cases. However, there still remains the overwhelming task of monitoring the solution process. This paper presents an approach to automate the CFD solution process. A new software tool, AeroDB, is used to compute thousands of Euler and Navier-Stokes solutions for a 2nd generation glide-back booster in one week. The solution process exploits a common job-submission grid environment, the NASA Information Power Grid (IPG), using 13 computers located at 4 different geographical sites. Process automation and web-based access to a MySql database greatly reduces the user workload, removing much of the tedium and tendency for user input errors. The AeroDB framework is shown. The user submits/deletes jobs, monitors AeroDB's progress, and retrieves data and plots via a web portal. Once a job is in the database, a job launcher uses an IPG resource broker to decide which computers are best suited to run the job. Job/code requirements, the number of CPUs free on a remote system, and queue lengths are some of the parameters the broker takes into account. The Globus software provides secure services for user authentication, remote shell execution, and secure file transfers over an open network. AeroDB automatically decides when a job is completed. Currently, the Cart3D unstructured flow solver is used for the Euler equations, and the Overflow structured overset flow solver is used for the Navier-Stokes equations. Other codes can be readily included into the AeroDB framework.

Chaderjian, Neal M.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Smashing the Stovepipe: Leveraging the GMSEC Open Architecture and Advanced IT Automation to Rapidly Prototype, Develop and Deploy Next-Generation Multi-Mission Ground Systems

Satellite/Payload Ground Systems - Typically highly-customized to a specific mission's use cases - Utilize hundreds (or thousands!) of specialized point-to-point interfaces for data flows / file transfers Documentation and tracking of these complex interfaces requires extensive time to develop and extremely high staffing costs Implementation and testing of these interfaces are even more cost-prohibitive, and documentation often lags behind implementation resulting in inconsistencies down the road With expanding threat vectors, IT Security, Information Assurance and Operational Security have become key Ground System architecture drivers New Federal security-related directives are generated on a daily basis, imposing new requirements on current / existing ground systems - These mandated activities and data calls typically carry little or no additional funding for implementation As a result, Ground System Sustaining Engineering groups and Information Technology staff continually struggle to keep up with the rolling tide of security Advancing security concerns and shrinking budgets are pushing these large stove-piped ground systems to begin sharing resources - I.e. Operational / SysAdmin staff, IT security baselines, architecture decisions or even networks / hosting infrastructure Refactoring these existing ground systems into multi-mission assets proves extremely challenging due to what is typically very tight coupling between legacy components As a result, many "Multi-Mission" ops. environments end up simply sharing compute resources and networks due to the difficulty of refactoring into true multi-mission systems Utilizing continuous integration / rapid system deployment technologies in conjunction with an open architecture messaging approach allows System Engineers and Architects to worry less about the low-level details of interfaces between components and configuration of systems GMSEC messaging is inherently designed to support multi-mission requirements, and allows components to aggregate data across multiple homogeneous or heterogeneous satellites or payloads - The highly-successful Goddard Science and Planetary Operations Control Center (SPOCC) utilizes GMSEC as the hub for it's automation and situational awareness capability Shifts focus towards getting GS to a final configuration-managed baseline, as well as multi-mission / big-picture capabilities that help increase situational awareness, promote cross-mission sharing and establish enhanced fleet management capabilities across all levels of the enterprise.

GMSEC↗
NASA NTRS2020

Integration Test and Evaluation (IT&E) Flight Test Series 6 Live Virtual Constructive - Distributed Environment (LVC-DE) Test Report

The goals of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) (also UAS-NAS) Project are to reduce the barriers for UAS access and its integration into the NAS. The UAS-NAS project and industry stakeholders conducted a series of flight tests integrating technologies from the Modeling & Simulation (M&S), Human Systems Integration (HSI), and Communication and Control (C2), and Integration, Test & Evaluation (IT&E) research areas. The last of the flight test series, Flight Test Series 6 (FT6) was conducted in late 2019 and focused on evaluating the interaction of the airborne non-cooperative surveillance system and the Detect and Avoid (DAA) technology. The DAA system generated conflict alert and guidance for pilots using a Research Ground Control System (RGCS) to avoid intruder aircraft. The conflict alerting and guidance information was presented on the RGCS’s display using symbology developed by the human factors team. The objective of FT6 was to investigate the interoperability of Low Size, Weight, and Power (Low SWaP) sensors with the DAA alerting, guidance, and display requirements. To support this goal, the distributed test environments (DTE) were developed at Ames Research Center (ARC) and Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) and securely linked over a Virtual Private Network (VPN). These environments took advantage of existing Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) technologies to support research observation at both Centers with the insertion of live UAS and manned intruder aircraft into a simulated NAS environment with Air Traffic Control (ATC) and constructive manned aircraft. The experiment was distributed between AFRC flight operations and research facilities and the Distributed Simulation Research Laboratory (DSRL) and Software Development Laboratory (SDL) in building N243 at ARC. The Air Traffic Controller and pseudo pilots operated from the DSRL and SDL, respectively, using the Multi-Aircraft Control System (MACS). The test subject and researchers operated from the Research Ground Control Station (RGCS) at AFRC using the Vigilant Spirit Control Station (VSCS) and associated DAA software and displays. Flight Operation for the unmanned aircraft (UA) and manned intruder traffic was conducted at AFRC. Virtual traffic was managed by ARC. Voice distribution was accomplished using a combination of disparate communication systems at ARC and AFRC. The purpose of this document is to record the development, design, and execution of activities in support of the FT6 efforts from the perspective of the ARC IT&E team. Furthermore, the Armstrong IT&E team has published a thorough FT6 Test Report, with emphasis on flight test support, facilities and vehicle development; this report complements the Armstrong report. Analysis of collected FT6 data will be conducted and reported by the M&S and HSI teams and will be published in separate reports.

UAS-NAS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Design Choices in Anomaly Detection for Industrial Control Systems: Insights from Gas Pipeline Data

Industrial control systems (ICS) remain vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, yet evaluating anomaly detection models in these environments is challenging due to temporal dependencies, missing-not-at-random patterns, and extremely imbalanced datasets. These factors make common practices—especially random data splits and naïve imputation—prone to severe temporal leakage, which can inflate reported performance and obscure real-world limitations. In this work, we systematically examine classical machine learning models, temporal deep learning architecture, and tensor-decomposition–based methods on a gas-pipeline dataset using a fully temporally separated evaluation pipeline designed to mimic realistic deployment conditions. Our findings show that proper temporal handling and MNAR-aware preprocessing significantly alter the relative performance of popular anomaly-detection methods, providing practical guidance for designing reliable, leakage-resistant ICS intrusion-detection systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗