This event will be held virtually. Contact Sara Harris for the link to view on Zoom.
Speaker: Sibin Mohan, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Title:How Security and Resiliency Intersect in Cyber-Physical Systems
Abstract: Applications in the cyber-physical systems (CPS) domain, such as smart cities, power grids, autonomous vehicles, V2X systems, medical devices, manufacturing systems, etc. are increasingly using commodity-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. They are also being interconnected for greater efficiency, better monitoring and improved functionality – a good example of such interconnectivity can be found in many smart city initiatives. On the other hand, the complexity of such systems increases, thus introducing bugs and vulnerabilities that are hard to detect. In fact, recent attacks have demonstrated how software problems can be used to break the resiliency of CPS, thus endangering the safety of the system, the operators or even the environment around it. The main goal of my work is to ensure that systems (and in particular CPS) remain resilient even in the face of successful attacks. There is a need to develop techniques that enable decision-making and improve resiliency to attacks in domains that are inherently interdisciplinary in nature. I will first present an overview of my research on the analysis of, and resiliency mechanisms for, cyber-physical systems. I will then present recent work on: (a) a novel side-channel that compromises the resiliency of cyber-physical systems, (b) techniques that introduce diversity into the timing behavior of CPS — as a means of protecting against side-channel attacks and (c) methods to measure the effectiveness of such defensive approaches. My work not only has a solid theoretical foundation but has also been evaluated on real hardware/software, for instance, using remote controlled/autonomous rover systems, embedded boards, manufacturing plants and other platforms.
Bio: Sibin Mohan is a Research Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He also holds appointments in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department as well the Information Trust Institute (ITI). Sibin completed his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2008 and 2004 respectively. His undergraduate degree was in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangalore University, India. He was previously a postdoctoral scholar in the Computer Science department at UIUC. In the past, he has also worked in Hewlett Packard’s India Software Operations. Sibin’s research interests are in the area of systems, networking and security. In the past, he has worked on modeling and analysis of real-time and cyber-physical systems such as avionics and medical devices. His current work includes resiliency and security mechanisms for: V2X systems, electric vehicles, smart manufacturing and unmanned systems (e.g. UAVs). At a high level, his research interests are: the integration of security for real-time systems, development of attack resilient platforms and using software defined networking (SDN) to improve the resiliency of CPS networks. He is also exploring methods to improve the resiliency of lightweight cloud computing platforms. Sibin has collaborated with not just academic researchers but also industry, viz. Boeing, Toyota Research, Visa Research, Qualcomm, IBM Research, Lockheed Martin and Rockwell Collins.
Seminar Host: Ashfaq Khokhar