Cybersecurity Engineering Laboratory

Furnished with state-of-the-art hardware and software to permit for participation in cybersecurity attack and defend exercises, the Cybersecurity Engineering Laboratory (CybEL) is isolated from the outside world.

Designed to meet instructional and research needs in the area of cybersecurity, a visualization infrastructure is offered to apply visualization techniques to attack-related data, as well as to display information about ongoing attacks.

The CybEL currently serves the following research areas:

• Aviation and Aerospace Cybersecurity
• Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems Security
• Safety and Security Analysis for End-to-End System Assurance
• Cloud/Fog Computing and Software-Defined Networking Security
• Machine Learning Applications to Systems Assurance
• Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Control, Safety Assurance and Security

For instructional purposes, this facility is the primary laboratory for the courses in the M.S. in Computer Science with area of concentration in Cybersecurity Engineering, B.S. in Computer Science and other programs offered by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). It is also used for high school Basic Cybersecurity summer camp, focused on cybersecurity education and hands-on learning. The White Hat Eagles Club (WHEC), a student-led cybersecurity club, uses this lab to train new members for cyber competitions and develop Capture the Flag (CTF) challenges for the annual Aviation Cyber Initiative (ACI) Cyber Rodeo — an event coordinated and hosted by the Center for Aerospace Resilient Systems (CARS) on behalf of the ACI. Additionally, CARS-affiliated faculty conduct advanced research in this lab on GPS spoofing and Cybersecurity Data Science (CSDS) for aviation, leveraging state-of-the-art software tools and flight simulators.

Equipment

• Isolated network from the university network, which includes:
  • Proliant DL380P HP Server with 128 Gigabytes and two Xeon processors
  • Force Dynamics 401CR simulator with X-Plane 11 and a Cessna 172
  • Cisco Catalyst Switch
  • 28 workstations with Windows 10 Pro with an isolated Active Directory Domain, Linux Virtual Machines
• Two overhead projectors
• A 69” x 122” LCD wall display