Security Engineering for Resilient Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems
(NSF grant # 1828811)

Project Overview

With the US National Science Foundation support (NSF grant # 1828811), Howard University in Washington, DC, will conduct a research project entitled "Security Engineering for Resilient Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems". The project consists of five related activities: (1) develop reproducible mobile cyber-physical system units; (2) design and evaluate a federated framework for incident detection and; (3) design and evaluate coupling of control, communication, and computation in mobile cyber-physical systems with a federated framework; (4) design and evaluate incident detection and response systems; (5) evaluation and validation of the proposed framework.

The proposed research leverages multidisciplinary expertise in cybersecurity for connected systems, transportation cyber physical systems, cognitive radio networking, information security, big data analytics and distributed cloud computing to significantly advance the knowledge base and understanding of the emerging field of cyber-physical system security. The goal is to design, develop and evaluate the cyber-defense solutions for resilient cyber-physical systems using a federated framework. The project also aims to strengthen the institution's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science doctoral program and attract, retain and graduate underrepresented minority graduate and undergraduate students in the field of cyber security research. The project will enhance integrated cybersecurity research and education at Howard University by developing a mobile Physical Systems testbed for implementing and evaluating adaptive cyber-defense solutions for resiliency. The project supports United States government efforts to produce the next-generation of cybersecurity experts needed for government, academia and industry.

Key Personnel

• Prof. Danda B. Rawat, PI

• Prof. Moses Garuba, Co-PI

• Ms. Jessica Whiteker, PhD in EE Candidate (Exp date: Dec 2023)

• Ms. Sunitha Safavat, Ph.D. in CS  (Graduated in Dec 2022)

• Mr. Salomon Satche, PhD in EE Student (Exp date: Dec 2023)

• Mr. Hassan Karim, PhD in CS (Graduated in Dec 2022)

• Ms. DeMarcus Edward, PhD in CS Candidate (Exp date: Dec 2023)

• Ms. Yvonne David, MS in CS Student, Graduated in May 2021

• Mr. Joshua Hector,  MS in CS Student, Graduated in May 2021

• Mr. Vijay Chaudhary, Ph.D. in CS (Graduated on May 2023)

• Mr. Felix Olowononi, Ph.D.  in CS (Graduated on May 2022)

• Ms. Yasmeen Mussard-Afcari, Ph.D. in CS student

• Mr. Guy Lingani, Ph.D. in CS (Graduated in May 12, 2020)

• Mr. Geremew Begna, Ph.D. in CS (Graduated in May 11, 2019)

Undergraduate students (Graduated in 2022 or earlier):

• Ms. Kikiola Akanbi

• Ms. Jasmon Cooley

• Oluwadare O. Bankole

• Mr. Derek Major

• Ms. Genesis Smothers 

• Mr. Justin Stewart

• Ms. Dalila Scott 

• To be added 

Publications and Dissemination 

• M. Bhurtel and Danda B. Rawat. "Unveiling the Landscape of Operating System Vulnerabilities." Future Internet 15, no. 7 pp. 248 - 269, July 2023. 

• Jessica Whitaker and Danda B Rawat, "Recent Advances in Cyberattack Detection and Mitigation Techniques for Renewable Photovoltaic Distributed Energy CPS,"  Computing Conference 2023, 22-23 June 2023, London, United Kingdom.

• G. Abdelmoumin , D. B. Rawat and A. Rahman, "On the Study of Imbalanced Learning for Anomaly-Based Intelligent IDS for Mission Critical Internet of Things," Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy," Submittted, 2023

• Ghimire, Bimal, and Danda B. Rawat. "Recent advances on federated learning for cybersecurity and cybersecurity for federated learning for internet of things."  IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Volume: 9, Issue: 11, June1, 1 2022)

•  G. Abdelmoumin*, D. B. Rawat and A. Rahman, "On the Performance of Machine Learning Models for Anomaly-Based Intelligent Intrusion Detection Systems for the Internet of Things," IEEE Internet of Things Journal ( Volume: 9, Issue: 6, March15, 15 2022)     

• Felix Olowononi*, Danda B. Rawat and Chunmei Liu, "Resilient Machine Learning for Networked Cyber Physical Systems: A Survey for Machine Learning Security to Securing Machine Learning for CPS," IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp: 524 - 552, First quarter, 2021. 

• Eric Muhati* and Danda B. Rawat, "Hidden Markov Model Enabled Prediction and Visualization of Cyber Agility in IoT era," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Vol. x, No. x, pp. xx- xx, 2021.

• Joshua B. Hector*, P. Katsiaris, N. E. Carey, N. Cote and Danda B. Rawat, "On the Security of Cyber-Physical Robotic Systems Using Dynamic Modeling and Simulation," Proc. of the IEEE ICC Workshops (I-CPSaaS), 14-23 June 2021.

• Aashma Uprety* and Danda B. Rawat, "Reinforcement Learning for IoT Security: A Comprehensive Survey,"  IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Vol. 8, No. 11, pp. : 8693 - 8706, June 2021.

• Vijay Chaudhary* and Danda B. Rawat, "Data-Driven Shortest Anypath in Wireless Network Virtualization for Mobile Cyber Physical System," Proc. of the IEEE ICC Workshops (DDINS), 14-23 June 2021.

• Danda B Rawat, "Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning and Articial Intelligence for Multi-Domain Operations," Proc. of the SPIE 2021 Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Multi-Domain Operations Applications III, 12 - 16 April 2021.

• Nasser Alsabilah* and Danda B. Rawat,  "Anomaly Detection in Smart Home Networks Using Kalman Filter," Proc. of the IEEE INFOCOM 2021 - MobiSec 2021 Wkshps, 10-13 May 2021, Virtual Conference.

• Eric Muhati* and Danda B. Rawat, "Adversarial Machine Learning for Inferring Augmented Cyber Agility Prediction," Proc. of the IEEE INFOCOM 2021 - BigSecurity 2021 Wkshps, 10-13 May 2021, Virtual Conference.

• Hassan Karim* and Danda B. Rawat, "TollsOnly Please -- Homomorphic Encryption for Toll Transponder Privacy in Internet of Vehicles," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Vol. x, No. x, pp. xx- xx, 2021.

• Sunitha Safavat* and Danda B. Rawat, "On the Elliptic  Curve Cryptography for Privacy-Aware Secure ACO-AODV Routing in Intent-Based Internet of Vehicles for Smart Cities," IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. x, No. x, pp. xx -xx, 2020. (Accepted). 

• Bimal Ghimire*, Danda B. Rawat, Chunmei Liu and Jiang Li, "Sharding Enabled Blockchain for Software-Defined Internet of Unmanned Vehicles in Battlefield," IEEE Network, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 101 - 107, 2021 

• Ronald Doku*, Danda B. Rawat and Chunmei Liu, "On the Blockchain-Based Decentralized Data Sharing for Event Based Encryption to Combat Adversarial Attacks," IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, Vol. x, No. x, pp. xxx-xxx, 2020.

• Danda B. Rawat,  R. Doku*, A. Adebayo*, C. Bacjacharya and C. Kamhoua, "Blockchain enabled Named Data Networking for Secure  Vehicle-to-Everything Communications," IEEE Network, Vol. xx, No. xx, pp. xx-xx, January 2020. 

• Felix O Olowononi*, Danda B. Rawat and C. Liu , "Dependable Adaptive Mobility in Vehicular Networks for Resilient Mobile Cyber Physical Systems," Proc. of the IEEE ICC 2020 Workshop on Secure and Dependable Software Defined Networking for Sustainable Smart Communities, 7-11 June 2020, Dublin, Ireland. 

• Ronald Doku* and Danda B. Rawat, "iFLBC: On the Edge Intelligence Using Federated Learning Blockchain Network," Proc. of The 5th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Data and Security (IEEE IDS 2020), May 25-27, 2020, Baltimore, USA

• Ronald Doku*, Danda B. Rawat, Moses Garuba and Laurent Njilla, "Fusion of Named Data Networking and Blockchain for Resilient Internet-of-Battlefield-Things," Proc. of the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (IEEE CCNC 2020), 10-13 January 2020, Las Vegas, NV, USA

• D. Aorini*, Ghaida Alorini* and Danda B. Rawat, "On the Influence Blocking Maximization for Minimizing the Spreading of Fake Information in Social Media," Proc. of the 2020  Spring Simulation Conference (SpringSim 2020) - Cyber Security Engineering (CSE) Track, May 19 – 21, 2020, Fairfax, VA, USA.

• Yasmeen Mussard-Afcari, Danda B. Rawat and Moses Garuba, "Data Validation and Correction for Resiliency in Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems," Proc. of the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference, 11-14 January 2019, Las Vegas, USA.

• Danda B. Rawat, Ronald Doku and Moses Garuba, "Cybersecurity in Big Data Era: From Securing Big Data to Data-Driven Security," IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Vol. x, No. x, pp: xx - xx, 2019, to appear. [PDF]

• K.  Z. Ghafoor,  L. Kong,  D. B. Rawat, E. Hosseini and A. Sadiq, "Quality of Service Aware Routing Protocol in Software-Defined Internet of Vehicles," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 2817 - 2828, 2019. 

• Danda B. Rawat and Kayhan Zrar Ghafoor, "Smart Cities Cybersecurity and Privacy", Elsevier Press, ISBN: 9780128150320, November 2018.

• Danda B. Rawat, Vijay Chaudhary and Ronald Doku, "Blockchain: Emerging Applications and Use Cases," arXiv:1904.12247, 2019.

• Felix O Olowononi, Danda B. Rawat, Moses Garuba and Charles Kamhoua, "Security Engineering with Machine Learning for Adversarial Resiliency in Mobile Cyber Physical Systems," Proc. of the SPIE 2019 Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Multi-Domain Operations Applications,  Baltimore, MD, USA, April 14 - 18, 2019.

• Vijay Chaudhary and Danda B. Rawat, "On the Machine Learning for Minimizing the Negative Influence in Mobile Cyber Physical Systems," Proc. of the SPIE 2019 Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Multi-Domain Operations Applications,  Baltimore, MD, USA, April 14 - 18, 2019.

• Geremew Begna and Danda B. Rawat, "Security Analysis in Context-Aware Distributed Storage and Query Processing in Hybrid Cloud Framework," Proc. of the IEEE CCWC 2019, Las Vega, USA, January 7 - 9, 2019.

• Guy M. Lingani, Danda B. Rawat and Moses Garuba, "Smart Traffic Management System using Deep Learning for Smart City Applications," Proc. of the IEEE CCWC 2019, Las Vega, USA, January 7 - 9, 2019.

Educational Activities

• Graduate students are being trained in this project during their PhD program at Howard University. They learned cutting-edge technologies related to emerging mobile cyber physical system and security. Most importantly, graduate students learn how to conduct scientific research (document and publish research results in peer-reviewed archival articles) by getting involved in algorithm design, system development, simulation and experiments.

• The research results from this project have been integrated into a graduate course and undergraduate courses (CSCI 479/EECE 479/EECE 679 Cyberecurity for Networked CPS/IoT) at Howard University  which is generally offered in every spring semester.

Course websites: 

Catalog: https://catalogue.howard.edu/electrical-engineering/eece-479

Course webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/spring2022-cybersec4cps-iot