EIN: Collaborative Research: Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal creates an experimental infrastructure network to support the development and demonstration of next-generation information security technologies for cyber defense. This cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network (DETER Network) will provide the necessary infrastructure -- networks, tools, methodologies and supporting process -- to support national-scale experimentation on emerging security research and advanced development technologies. The DETER network will be designed and operated to ensure direct participation from government entities and their sponsored researchers in a wide and varied community. Early activities and deliverables will describe policies procedures for use of the experimental facility along with a users guide. The work will facilitate scientific experimentation and validation against established baselines of attack behavior and allow experimental approaches that involve breaking the network infrastructure. The DETER network will promote and catalyze expanded research and commercialization efforts in this vital area. Intellectual Merit: The proposal will develop architectures for test bed networks that are representative of the Internet itself at a somewhat smaller scale. It will leverage work from ACIR at the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley on traffic generation for use in the DETER network. The development of both of these is itself a significant research challenge. On versions of the DETER network we will study cyber security solutions to Distributed Denial of Service, Worm Defense and other network attacks through a combination of experiments, emulation, and analytical solutions. The aim is to integrate analytic methods with experiments on networks of adequate scale and complexity so as to be able to have confidence in solutions and transfer them to industrial partners participating in the test bed through their equipment. Broader impact: This proposal is expected to be the key building block for bringing network security initially against Distributed Denial of Service and then Worm attacks but in general all intrusions. The testbed network will be integrated into course work at both the upper division and graduate level Berkeley, USC and at partner institutions at UC Davis, Purdue, and Penn State.