[IP] NSF Announces Two Cybersecurity Centers to Study Internet Epidemiology and "Ecology"
NSF ANNOUNCES TWO CYBERSECURITY CENTERS TO STUDY INTERNET EPIDEMIOLOGY
AND
"ECOLOGY"
Centers top list of awards from NSF's $30 million Cyber Trust program
(Embedded image moved to file: pic21945.jpg)
NSF has announced 33 new projects from its Cyber Trust program,
including
two new cybersecurity research centers. Cyber Trust projects are
looking
not only for new ways to cope with imperfections in today's systems,
but
also for the knowledge and techniques to build better systems in the
future.
Credit: iStockPro
ARLINGTON, Va.?The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced 33
new
projects from its $30 million Cyber Trust program, including two new
cybersecurity research centers that will focus on eliminating plagues
of
Internet worms and viruses and on building better security defenses
through
a deeper understanding of Internet "ecology."
"The Cyber Trust program?the centerpiece of NSF's leadership of
cybersecurity research and development?promotes research into more
dependable, accountable and secure computer and network systems," said
Peter Freeman, NSF assistant director for computer and information
science
and engineering. "We are very pleased to be able to add these
activities to
our growing portfolio of work in this critical area."
The first center, led by Mike Reiter of Carnegie Mellon University will
focus on "Security Through Interaction Modeling" (STIM). In the same
way
that ecology studies the web of life, the STIM Center will pursue
fundamental understanding of the networks of interactions among humans,
computers, and even cyberattacks.
The STIM Center, with anticipated funding of $6.4 million over five
years,
will explore ways to create more effective and usable defenses by
modeling
these networks of interactions and making the models an integral part
of
the defenses. Among its activities, the center will study healthy
network
interactions to see what distinguishes them from attacks; examine the
network interactions of particular "species" of applications, such as
e-mail or peer-to-peer networks, for clues to limiting successful
attacks;
and, to develop better defenses, study how cyber-attackers can combine
attacks to reach their goals.
The Center for Internet Epidemiology and Defenses will be led by Stefan
Savage of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and Vern
Paxson
of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), affiliated
with UC
Berkeley. The center, with expected five-year funding of $6.2 million,
will
be dedicated to wiping out those plagues of the Internet, worms and
viruses
that infect thousands upon thousands of computers and cause billions of
dollars in down time, network congestion and potentially lost data.
Taking cues from the field of epidemiology, the center will work to
understand how the Internet's open communications and software
vulnerabilities permit worms to propagate, to devise a global-scale
early
warning system to detect epidemics in their early stages, to develop
forensics capabilities for analyzing wide-ranging infections, and to
develop techniques and devices that can suppress outbreaks before they
reach pandemic proportions.
"These centers as well as our other funded activities are looking not
only
for new ways to cope with imperfections in today's systems, but also
for
the knowledge and techniques to build better systems in the future,"
said
Carl Landwehr, program director for Cyber Trust. "We had a number of
strong
proposals, indicating the depth of interest in this area by the
academic
research community."
Both centers will also initiate significant efforts in education and
workforce development and coordinate with ongoing outreach activities
on
their campuses. The centers' results will be incorporated into
undergraduate and graduate courses, K-12 and college-level curricula
and
training programs for high-school students and faculty at traditionally
minority-serving institutions.
In addition to the two centers, the Cyber Trust program will support
12 new
team projects and 19 individual or small-group projects, out of nearly
400
projects proposed.
For securing today's systems, new Cyber Trust awards include projects
that
will investigate methods for detecting tampered photographs that have
not
been tamper-proofed, improve tools used in network forensics, and
evaluate
the strength of biometrics, which are increasingly advocated as a
means for
identifying users in all kinds of systems. New awards also support
research
into better detection of and defense against malicious code, anomalies
in
network routing, distributed denial of service attacks and other system
intrusions.
To better secure tomorrow's systems, new Cyber Trust awards are aimed
both
at the detection and removal of software flaws and at developing
architectures and algorithms that are resilient even in the face of
such
flaws. More fundamental work in cryptography, the foundation of many
mechanisms for protecting digital information and establishing trust
will
also be supported.
New Cyber Trust awards also support multidisciplinary research to
improve
understanding of the social, legal, ethical and economic trade-offs
that
affect the design and operation of trusted information systems.
Finally,
all Cyber Trust projects encompass education and workforce development
to
ensure that those who produce, operate and use trusted systems can put
the
technological advances into practice.
For more information see:
NSF Cyber Trust Program:
http://www.cise.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_display.cfm?pub_id=6476
###
NSF-PR 04-124
Program contact: Carl Landwehr, NSF, (703) 292-8950, clandweh@xxxxxxx
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