Hardware Components in Cybersecurity Education

Hardware components have been designated as required academic content for colleges to be recognized as a center of academic excellence in cyber operations by the National Security Agency (NSA). To meet the hardware requirement, computer science and information technology programs must cover hardware concepts and design skills, topics which are less emphasized in existing programs. This paper describes a new pedagogical model for hardware based on network intrusion detection taught at college and graduate levels in a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Program (CAE/IAE). The curriculum focuses on the fundamental concepts of network intrusion detection mechanisms, network traffic analysis, rule-based detection logic, system configuration, and basic hardware design and experiments. This new course enriches students with the latest developments

A MULTI-GIGABIT NETWORK PACKET INSPECTION AND ANALYSIS ARCHITECTURE FOR INTRUSION DETECTION AND PREVENTION UTILIZING PIPELINING AND CONTENT-ADDRESSABLE MEMORY

Increases in network traffic volume and transmission speeds have given rise to the need for extremely fast packet processing. Many traditional processor-based network devices are no longer sufficient to handle tasks such as packet analysis and intrusion detection at multi-Gigabit rates. This thesis proposes two novel pipelined hardware architectures to relieve the computational load of a processor within network switches and routers. First, the Embedded Protocol Analyzer Pre-Processor (ePAPP) is capable of taking an unclassified packet byte stream directly off of a network cable at line speed and separating the data into individually classified protocol fields. Second, the CAM-Assisted Signature-Matching Architecture (CASMA) uses ternary content-addressable memory to perform the task of stateless intrusion detection signature-matching. The Snort open-source software network intrusion detection system is used as a model for intrusion detection functionality. Structured ASIC synthesis results show that ePAPP supports speeds of 2.89 Gb/s using less than 1% of available logic cells. CASMA is shown to support 1.25 Gb/s using less than 6% of available logic cells. The CASMA architecture is demonstrated to be able to implement 1729 of 1993 or 86.8% of the attack signatures, or rules, packaged with Snort version 2.1.2

Techniques for Processing TCP/IP Flow Content in Network Switches at Gigabit Line Rates

The growth of the Internet has enabled it to become a critical component used by businesses, governments and individuals. While most of the traffic on the Internet is legitimate, a proportion of the traffic includes worms, computer viruses, network intrusions, computer espionage, security breaches and illegal behavior. This rogue traffic causes computer and network outages, reduces network throughput, and costs governments and companies billions of dollars each year. This dissertation investigates the problems associated with TCP stream processing in high-speed networks. It describes an architecture that simplifies the processing of TCP data streams in these environments and presents a hardware circuit capable of TCP stream processing on multi-gigabit networks for millions of simultaneous network connections. Live Internet traffic is analyzed using this new TCP processing circuit

A study on the effect of stroop test on the formation of students discipline by using the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technique

Discipline refers to self-control and individual behaviour. Other than that, discipline is an important element in the formation of integrity level. The objective of the study is to assess the effects of using the Stroop test of biofeedback protocol in order to evaluate individual level of discipline. A clinical study has been conducted on 50 participants which is the participants is a undergraduate student from Universiti Malaysia Pahang, who were divided into two groups. First group is students get high achiever and second group is students get low achierver in academic. The Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technique has been used in the assessment of this protocol. The findings show that there was a positive relationship between the Stroop test and the students discipline that those who excelled managed to get higher score of LF spectrum as compared to HF and VLF, while the students with lower achievement showed higher score of VLF and HF spectrum than LF. In conclusion, this test is one of the tests that can be used in increasing the level of individual discipline