Research Experiences for Undergraduates Seminar

Detection of Cyber Attacks Utilizing Behavioral Semantics

When: Friday, June 19, 2015
Where: PGH 563
Time: 12:00 - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Dr. Victor A. Skormin, Binghamton University

Host: Prof. Stephen Huang

Cyber attacks present a formidable threat not only to integrity and confidentiality of stored data, but to computer-controlled processes. Nowadays, most industrial, military and government processes are run through dedicated computer systems. Operation of such processes implies that the end user accesses such a process not directly but through a special computer interface by defining required operational regimes, or data to be retrieved, recorded, or transmitted. Then it is up to the computer to provide the necessary set point values to process controllers, to sample sensors, to perform search, retrieval of the requested data, to operate printers or computer graphics, to locate available communication channels, code and transmit data, etc. Examples go far beyond power plants and rocket launchers. Banking industry, insurance, libraries, data depositories, hospitals utilize their own dedicated computer facilities operating in this fashion. "Dedicated" is the key word - it emphasizes that these computer facilities run only a few preapproved applications and are closed to general public. (In contrast, a university campus computer is open to general public and runs virtually any application.) Attacking dedicated computers offers a highly efficient way to render useless the processes they service and compromise stored information.

We will discuss a novel cyber security technology that is based on behavioral normalcy profiling and operates on the level of functionalities thus providing unambiguous representation of the goals of the particular applications. The approach reliably detects malware and non-malicious applications that are not approved for a particular computer system. Fully operational system prototype enhanced by advanced visualization will be demonstrated.

Bio:

Dr. Victor A. Skormin is a Distinguished Service Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University (SUNY). He has a MS (1968) degree from the Kazakh Polytechnic Institute, Alma-Ata, U.S.S.R, and a Ph.D. (1974) degree from the Institute of Steel and Alloys, Moscow, U.S.S.R. He was an organizer/co-chairman of the bi-annual International workshop "Mathematical Methods, Models and Architectures for Computer Networks Security" in St. Petersburg, Russia. Dr. Skormin is an author/editor of several books and a large number of research papers; he supervised 24 PhD dissertations, and served as an Editor for Space Systems of the IEEE AES Transactions. He is a Life Senior Member of IEEE.

Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.