UMBC redesignated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense

UMBC has been redesignated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD) through the academic year 2028.

The CAE-CD designation indicates that UMBC is helping reduce threats to our national infrastructure by promoting higher education and research in cyber defense and providing the nation with a pipeline of qualified cybersecurity professionals. UMBC is also designated as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research (CAE-R), which signifies that UMBC increases the understanding of robust cyber defense technology, policy, and practices that will enable our Nation to prevent and respond to a catastrophic event.

The National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) program is managed by the National Cryptologic School at the National Security Agency. Federal Partners include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)/National Initiative on Cybersecurity Education (NICE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense Office of the Chief Information Officer (DoD-CIO), and US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM).

The NCAE-C program’s mission is to create and manage a collaborative cybersecurity educational program with community colleges, colleges, and universities that

• Establishes standards for cybersecurity curriculum and academic excellence,
• Includes competency development among students and faculty,
• Values community outreach and leadership in professional development, 
• Integrates cybersecurity practice within the institution across academic disciplines,
• Actively engages in solutions to challenges facing cybersecurity education.

UMBC offers courses, a track, and concentrations focused on cybersecurity in its Computer Science and Information Systems programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, UMBC has several major cybersecurity-oriented scholarship programs to prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals in an increasingly digital age, focusing on increasing the participation of women and other underrepresented groups in this fast-growing field. These include the UMBC Cyber Scholars program, CyberCorps: Scholarships For Service (SFS) program, and DOD Cyber Scholarship Program (CySP). Applications for SFS cybersecurity scholarships to begin in Fall 2022 are due via Scholarship Retriever by 12noon November 15, 2021.

UMBC also has professional cybersecurity programs that include certificate programs as well as a Master’s of Professional Studies (MPS) degree at its campuses in Catonsville (UMBC main campus) and Rockville (UMBC at the Universities at Shady Grove). UMBC Training Centers offers cybersecurity courses for both individuals and organizations.

Cybersecurity research at UMBC occurs in many of its laboratories and in the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity (UCYBR), which recently merged with UMBC’s original cybersecurity center, the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance (CISA).

UMBC’s Cyber Defense Lab presents

Presentations of the UMBC INSuRE Research Projects from Fall 2020

12:00noon–1:30pm, Friday, 18 December 2020

via WebEx

The Information Security Research and Education (INSuRE) research collaborative is a network of National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research (CAE-Rs) universities that cooperate to engage students in solving applied cybersecurity research problems. Since fall 2012, INSuRE has fielded a multi-institutional cybersecurity research course in which BS, MS, and Ph.D. students work in small groups to solve unclassified problems proposed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and by other government and private organizations and laboratories.

Schedule
12:00-12:15pm poster presentations
12:15-12:40pm Detecting Web-Based Cryptomining Malware by Mining Open-Source Repositories
12:40-1:05pm Meeting Mayhem: A Network Adversary Game
1:05-1:30pm Analysis of the 5G AKA protocol with Comparison to 4G AKA

Detecting Web-Based Cryptomining Malware by Mining Open-Source Repositories
Naomi Albert, Elias Enamorado, Benjamin Padgette, Anshika Patel
Technical Director: William J. La Cholter (APL)
UMBC Expert: Charles Nicholas

With the ever-increasing popularity of browser-based cryptomining it is now more important than ever to detect malicious cryptojacking code. This paper serves to identify reliable indicators of injected cryptomining code in open-source repositories using static source code analysis techniques. We analyze static source code features of a curated set of cryptomining projects and innocuous codebases that are available as open-source projects on GitHub. Through this analysis we show that a novel Normalized Halstead Difficulty metric can be an important indicator of the presence of cryptomining software. Specifically, the Normalized Halstead complexity is significantly higher for cryptomining source code files as compared to the sampled non-miners. Using this newfound knowledge of the complexity of browser-based JavaScript cryptominers, supply-chain cryptojacking injection attacks in open-source repositories may be easier to identify through automated code review techniques.

Meeting Mayhem: A Network Adversary Game
Richard Baldwin, Trenton Foster
Technical Director: Edward Zieglar (NSA)
UMBC Experts: Marc Olano, Linda Oliva

Meeting Mayhem, a web-based educational game, teaches adversarial thinking through the Dolev-Yao security model. Meeting Mayhem is based on the paper-and-pencil “Protocol Analysis Game,” introduced by Edward Zieglar and adapted by UMBC PhD student Enis Golaszewski. Two or more users try to arrange a meeting time and place by sending messages through an insecure network controlled by an adversary. Through self discovery, players learn the dangers of network communications and the value of sound protocols supported by encryption, hashing, and digital signatures.

Formal Methods Analysis of the 5G AKA protocol, with Comparison to 4G AKA
Prajna Bhandary, Ryan Jahnige, Jason Schneck
Technical Director: Edward Zieglar (NSA)

We analyze the Fifth Generation (5G) Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol and the Fourth Generation (4G) Evolved Packet System Authentication and Key Agreement (EPS-AKA) protocol for possible structural faults using the Cryptographic Protocol Shapes Analyzer (CPSA). It is fundamental to provide authentication and key management in the security of cellular networks. 5G AKA provides mutual authentication between subscribers and the network, by providing the keys to protect both signaling and user plane data. 4G defines an authentication method, EPS-AKA, whereas 5G offers several different authentication techniques: 5G AKA, 5G EAP-AKA, and 5G EAP-TLS. In addition to our formal method analysis of 5G AKA and 4G EPS-AKA, we also analyze the differences in security properties between the 4G EPS-AKA protocol, and 5G AKA protocol. We verify that the upgrades made to 4G EPS-AKA improves control of the Home Network (HN) in 5G AKA. Additionally, we found that the ambiguous nature of the documentation regarding the channel between Serving Network (SN) and HN results in authentication concerns and we propose a solution.

Course Instructor: Alan T. Sherman

Support for this event is provided in part by the NSF under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1pm. All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL meetings:

Biweekly CDL talks will resume in the spring 2021 semester.
The 2021 UMBC SFS/CySP Research Study will take place remotely in January (likely January 11-15).