CERT
 
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Our research in survivable systems engineering involves analyzing how susceptible systems are to sophisticated attacks and proposing better designs for such systems. We also develop techniques that enable us to predict future threats to the internet. The results of our research contribute to our work with network situational awareness. As part of this "operational" component, we are developing tools and techniques that will improve the ability for network administrators to identify what is happening on their networks. These tools and techniques include engineering solutions and research approaches for analyzing broad network activity. The goal is to quantitatively characterize threats and targeted intruder activity.

Network Situational Awareness (NetSA)

The Network Situational Awareness group develops engineering solutions and research approaches for analyzing broad network activity. The goal is to quantitatively characterize threats and targeted intruder activity.

Publications and presentations

Finding Peer-to-Peer File-sharing Using Coarse Network Behaviors - Collins and Reiter (pdf)
A Model for Opportunistic Network Exploits: The Case of P2P Worms - Collins, Gates, and Kataria (pdf)

Tools & Components

offsite SiLK
A collection of netflow tools developed by the NetSA Team to facilitate security analysis in large networks.
offsite AirCERT
Automated Incident Reporting (AirCERT) is a scalable distributed system for sharing security event data among administrative domains.

Survivable Systems Engineering (SSE)

The field of survivable systems engineering explores the current state of systems to identify problems and propose engineering solutions.

Popular Destinations

SSE Overview
Includes a comprehensive list of SSE research projects.

CERT Research Annual Report
describes current CERT Research projects in terms of problems addressed, research approaches, expected benefits, accomplishments, and plans

Research Staff Biographies


Research Projects

Flow-Service-Quality (FSQ) Engineering
FSQ engineering provides foundations for mastering complexity and improving survivability in analysis and development of large-scale, network-centric systems.

SQUARE
The Security Quality Requirements Engineering (SQUARE) methodology consists of nine steps that generate a final deliverable of categorized and prioritized security requirements. Although the SQUARE methodology could likely be generalized to any large-scale design project, it was designed for use with information technology systems.

Star*Lab
Star*Lab is an internal software development laboratory that CERT has established to create theory-based prototype automation that provides operational solutions to challenge problems in security and software engineering.


Publications

CERT Research 2007 Annual Report (pdf)
Analysis of Security Events on the Internet
A Common Language for Computer Security Incidents (pdf)
Survivable Network Systems: An Emerging Discipline (pdf)
A Simulation Model for Managing Survivability of Networked Information Systems (pdf)