There are different requirements on cybersecurity of industrial control systems and information technology systems. This fact exacerbates the global issue of hiring cybersecurity employees with relevant skills. In this paper, we present KYPO4INDUSTRY training facility and a course syllabus for beginner and intermediate computer science students to learn cybersecurity in a simulated industrial environment. The training facility is built using open-source hardware and software and provides reconfigurable modules of industrial control systems. The course uses a flipped classroom format with hands-on projects: the students create educational games that replicate real cyber attacks. Throughout the semester, they learn to understand the risks and gain capabilities to respond to cyber attacks that target industrial control systems. Our described experience from the design of the testbed and its usage can help any educator interested in teaching cybersecurity of cyber-physical systems.
In today's modern farm, an increasing number of agricultural systems and vehicles are connected to the Internet. While the benefits of networked agricultural machinery are attractive, this technological shift is also creating an environment that is conducive to cyberattacks. While previous research has focused on general cybersecurity concerns in the farming and agricultural industries, minimal research has focused on techniques for identifying security vulnerabilities within actual agricultural systems that could be exploited by cybercriminals. Hence, this paper presents STAVE - a Security Te…
This paper presents a real-time cyber-physical (CPS) testbed for power systems with different real attack scenarios on the synchrophasors-phasor measurement units (PMU). The testbed focuses on real-time cyber-security emulation with components including a digital real-time simulator, virtual machines (VM), a communication network emulator, and a package manipulation tool. The script-based VM deployment and the software-defined network emulation facilitate a highly-scalable cyber-physical testbed, which enables emulations of a real power system under different attack scenarios such as Address R…
NetSecBed: A Container-Native Testbed for Reproducible Cybersecurity Experimentation
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)(南里奥格兰德联邦大学);AI Horizon Labs(AI Horizon实验室);Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA)(潘帕联邦大学);Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPI-INF)(马克斯·普朗克信息学研究所)
Artifacts such as log data and network traffic are fundamental for cybersecurity research, e.g., in the area of intrusion detection. Yet, most research is based on artifacts that are not available to others or cannot be adapted to own purposes, thus making it difficult to reproduce and build on existing work. In this paper, we identify the challenges of artifact generation with the goal of conducting sound experiments that are valid, controlled, and reproducible. We argue that testbeds for artifact generation have to be designed specifically with reproducibility and adaptability in mind. To ac…
The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has displayed tremendous growth in recent years, resulting in innovations like Industry 4.0 and smart environments that provide improvements to efficiency, management of assets and facilitate intelligent decision making. However, these benefits are offset by considerable cybersecurity concerns that arise due to inherent vulnerabilities, which hinder IoT-based systems' Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Security vulnerabilities can be detected through the application of penetration testing, and specifically, a subset of the information-gathering …
When learning cybersecurity, operating systems, or networking, students perform practical tasks using a broad range of command-line tools. Collecting and analyzing data about the command usage can reveal valuable insights into how students progress and where they make mistakes. However, few learning environments support recording and inspecting command-line inputs, and setting up an efficient infrastructure for this purpose is challenging. To aid engineering and computing educators, we share the design and implementation of an open-source toolset for logging commands that students execute on L…
We reflect on our ongoing journey in the educational Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) Project to create two concept inventories for cybersecurity. We identify key steps in this journey and important questions we faced. We explain the decisions we made and discuss the consequences of those decisions, highlighting what worked well and what might have gone better. The CATS Project is creating and validating two concept inventories---conceptual tests of understanding---that can be used to measure the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching and learning cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity…
Cybersecurity students need to develop practical skills such as using command-line tools. Hands-on exercises are the most direct way to assess these skills, but assessing students' mastery is a challenging task for instructors. We aim to alleviate this issue by modeling and visualizing student progress automatically throughout the exercise. The progress is summarized by graph models based on the shell commands students typed to achieve discrete tasks within the exercise. We implemented two types of models and compared them using data from 46 students at two universities. To evaluate our models…
Advancing Inclusivity in Cybersecurity Education: Integrating Intersectionality to Enhance Student Engagement in Australian Higher Education Curriculums Strategies, Barriers, and Future Directions
School of Computing Technologies, RMIT(皇家墨尔本理工大学计算技术学院);University of Tasmania(塔斯马尼亚大学);Adelaide University(阿德莱德大学);Office of Indigenous Education Research and Engagement, RMIT University(皇家墨尔本理工大学原住民教育研究与参与办公室)