The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
The Center for Education and Research inInformation Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
History
Back in 1997, the year before CERIAS was formally established, I testified before Congress on the state of cyber security in academia. In my testimony, I pointed out that there were only four established research groups, and their combined, yearly PhD production was around 3 per year, not counting cryptography.
Also in that testimony, I outlined that support was needed for new centers of expertise, and better support of existing centers.
As a result of that testimony, I was asked to participate in some discussions with staff from OSTP, from some Congressional committees (notably, the House Science Committee), and Richard Clarke's staff in the Executive Office of the President. I was also invited to some conversations with leadership at the NSA, including the deputy director for information security systems (IAD) (Mike Jacobs). Those discussions were about how to increase the profile of the area, and get more people educated in information security.
Among the ideas I discussed were ones expanded from my testimony. They eventually morphed into the Scholarship for Service program, the NSF CyberTrust program, and the NSA Centers of Academic Excellence (CAE). [NB. I am not going to claim sole or primary credit for these programs. I know I came up with the ideas, briefed people about them, discussed pros & cons, and then those groups took them and turned them into what we got. None of them are quite what I proposed, but that is how things happen in DC.]
The CAE program was established by the NSA in late 1998. The CAE certification was built around courses meeting CNSS requirements. Purdue was one of the first seven universities certified as CAEs, in May of 1999. We remained in the CAE program until earlier this year (2008). In 2003, DHS became a co-sponsor of the program.
Why Purdue is No Longer a CAE
In 2007, we were informed that unless we renewed our CNSS certifications by the end of August, we would not be eligible for CAE renewal in 2008. This prompted discussion and reflection by faculty and staff at CERIAS. As noted above, the mapping of CNSS requirements to our classes is non-trivial. The CAE application was also non-trivial. None of our personnel were willing to devote the hours of effort required to do the processing. Admittedly, we could have "faked" some of the mapping (as we know some schools have done in the past), but that was never an option for us. We had other objections, too (see what follows).As a result, we did not renew the certifications, and we dropped out of the CAE program when our certification expired earlier this year.
Our decision was not made lightly -- we nearly dropped out in 2004 when we last renewed (and were not grandfathered into the new 5 year renewal cycle, much to our annoyance), and there was continuing thought given to this over intervening years. We identified a number of issues with the program, and the overhead of the mapping and application process was not the only (or principal) issue.
First, and foremost, we do not believe it is possible to have 94 (most recent count) Centers of Excellence in this field. After the coming year, we would not be surprised if the number grew to over 100, and that is beyond silly. There may be at most a dozen centers of real excellence, and pretending that the ability to offer some courses and stock a small library collection means "excellence" isn't candid.
The program at this size is actually a Centers of Adequacy program. That isn't intended to be pejorative -- it is simply a statement about the size of the program and the nature of the requirements.
Some observers and colleagues outside the field have looked at the list of schools and made the observation that there is a huge disparity among the capabilities, student quality, resources and faculties of some of those schools. Thus, they have concluded, if those schools are all equivalent as "excellent" in cyber security, then that means that the good ones can't be very good ("excellent" means defining the best, after all). So, we have actually had pundits conclude that cyber security & privacy studies can't be much of a discipline. That is a disservice to the field as a whole.
Instead of actually designating excellence, the CAE program has become an ersatz certification program. The qualifications to be met are for minimums, not for excellence. In a field with so few real experts and so little money for advanced efforts, this is understandable given one of the primary goals of the CAE program -- to encourage schools to offer IA/IS programs. Thus, the program sets a relatively low bar and many schools have put in efforts and resources to meet those requirements. This is a good thing, because it has helped raise the awareness of the field. However, it currently doesn't set a high enough bar to improve the field, nor does it offer the resources to do so.
Setting a low bar also means that academic program requirements are being heavily influenced by a government agency rather than the academic community itself. This is not good for the field because it means the requirements are being set based on particular application need (of the government) rather than the academic community's understanding of foundations, history, guiding principles, and interaction with other fields. (E.g., Would your mathematics department base its courses on what is required to produce IRS auditors? We think not!) In practice, the CAE program has probably helped suppress what otherwise would be a trend by our community to discuss a formal, common curriculum standard. In this sense, participation in the CAE program may now be holding us back.
Second, and related, the CNSS standards are really training standards, and not educational standards. Some of them might be met by a multi-day class taught by a commercial service such as SANS or CSI -- what does that say about university-level classes we map to them? The original CNSS intent was to provide guidance for the production of trained system operators -- rather than the designers, researchers, thinkers, managers, investigators and more that some of our programs (and Purdue's, in particular) are producing.
We have found the CNSS standards to be time-consuming to map to courses, and in many cases inappropriate, and therefore inappropriate for our students. Tellingly, in 9 years we have never had a single one of our grads ask us for proof that they met the CNSS standards because an employer cared! We don't currently intend to offer courses structured around any of the CNSS standards, and it is past the point where we are interested in supporting the fiction that they are central to a real curriculum.
Third, we have been told repeatedly over the years that there might be resources made available for CAE schools if only we participated. It has never happened. The Scholarship for Service program is open to non-CAE schools (read the NSF program solicitation carefully), so don't think of that as an example. With 100 schools, what resources could reasonably be expected? If the NSA or DHS got an extra $5 million, and they spread it evenly, each would get $50,000. Take out institutional overhead charges, and that might be enough for 1 student scholarship...if that. If there were 10 schools, then $500,000 each is an amount that might begin to make a difference. But over a span of nearly 10 years the amount provided has been zero, and any way you divide that, it doesn't really help any of us. Thus, we have been investing time and energy in a program that has not brought us resources to improve. Some investment of our energy & time to bolster community was warranted, but that time is past.
Fourth, the renewal process is a burden because of the nature of university staffing and the time required. With no return on getting the designation, we could not find anyone willing to invest the time for the renewal effort.
Closing Comments
In conclusion, we see the CAE effort as valuable for smaller schools, or those starting programs. By having the accreditation (which is what this is, although it doesn't meet ISO standards for such), those programs can show some minimal capabilities, and perhaps obtain local resources to enhance them. However, for major programs with broader thrusts and a higher profile, the CAE has no real value, and may even have negative connotations. (And no, the new CAE-R program does not solve this as it is currently structured.)
The CAE program is based on training standards (CNSS) that do not have strong pedagogical foundations, and this is also not appropriate for a leading educational program. As the field continues to evolve over the next few years, faculty at CERIAS at Purdue expect to continue to play a leading role in shaping a real academic curriculum. That cannot be done by embracing the CAE.
We are confident that people who understand the field are not going to ignore the good schools simply because they don't have the designation, any more than people have ignored major CS programs because they do not have CSAB accreditation. We've been recognized for our excellence in research, we continue to attract and graduate excellent students, and we continue to serve the community. We are certain that people will recognize that and respond accordingly.
More importantly, this goes to the heart of what it means to be "trustworthy." Security and privacy issues are based on a concept of trust and that also implies honesty. It simply is not honest to continue to participate in (and thereby support) a designation that is misleading. There are not 94 centers of excellence in information and cyber security in the US. You might ask the personnel at some of the schools that are so designated as to why they feel the need to participate and shore up that unfortunate canard.
The above was originally written in 2008. A few years later, the CAE requirements were changed to add a CAE-R designation (R for research), and several of our students did the mapping so we were redesignated. Most of the criticisms remain accurate even in 2012.
This morning I received an email, sent to a list of people (I assume). The subject of the email was “Computer Hacker’s service needed” and the contents indicated that the sender was seeking someone to trace back to the sender of some enclosed email. The email in question? The pernicious spam email purporting to be from someone who has been given a contract to murder the recipient, but on reflection will not do the deed if offered a sum of money.
This form of spam is well-known in most of the security and law enforcement communities, and there have been repeated advisories and warnings issued to the public. For instance, Snopes has an article on it because it is so widespread as to have urban legend status. The scam dates back at least to 2006, and is sometimes made to seem more authentic by including some personalized information (usually taken from online sources). A search using the terms “hitman scam spammer” returns over 200,000 links, most of the top ones being stories in news media and user alert sites. The FBI has published several alerts about this family of frauds, too. This is not a rare event.
However, it is not that the author of the email missed those stories that prompts this post. After all, it is not the case that each of us can be aware of everything being done online.
Rather, I am troubled that someone would ostensibly take the threat seriously, and as a follow-up, seek a “hacker” to trace the email back to its sender rather than report it to law enforcement authorities.
One wonders if the same person were to receive the same note on paper, in surface email, whether he would seek the services of someone adept at breaking into mail boxes to seek out the author? Even if he did that, what would it accomplish? Purportedly, the author of the note is a criminal with some experience and compatriots (these emails, and this one in particular, always refer to a gang that is watching the recipient). What the heck is the recipient going to do with someone—and his gang—who probably doesn’t live anywhere nearby?
Perhaps the “victim” might know (or suspect) it is a scam, but is trying to aid the authorities by tracing the email? But why spend your own money to do something that law enforcement is perhaps better equipped to do? Plus, a “hacker” is not necessarily going to use legal methods that will allow the authorities to use the results. Perhaps even more to the point, the “hacker” may not want to be exposed to the authorities—especially if they regularly break the law to find people!
Perhaps the victim already consulted law enforcement and was told it was a scam, but doesn’t believe it? Well, some additional research should be convincing. Plus, the whole story simply isn’t credible. However, if the victim really does have a streak of paranoia and a guilty conscience, then perhaps this is plausible. However, in this case, whoever is hired would likewise be viewed with suspicion, and any report made is going to be doubted by the victim. So, there is no real closure here.
Even worse, if a “hacker” is found who is willing to break the rules and the laws to trace back email, what is to say that he (or she) isn’t going to claim to have found the purported assassin, he’s real, and the price has gone up but the “hacker” is willing to serve as an intermediary? Once the money is paid, the problem is pronounced “fixed,” This is a form of classic scam too—usually played on the gullible by “mystics” who claim that the victim is cursed and can only be cured by a complicated ritual involving a lot of money offered to “the spirits.”
Most important—if someone is hired, and that person breaks the law, then the person hiring that “hacker” can also be charged under the law. Hiring someone to break the law is illegal. And having announced his intentions to this mailing list, the victim has very limited claims of ignorance at this point.
At the heart of this, I am simply bewildered how someone would attempt to find a “hacker”—whose skill set would be unknown, whose honesty is probably already in question, and whose allegiances are uncertain—to track down the source of a threat rather than go to legitimate law enforcement. I can’t imagine a reasonable person (outside of the movies) receiving a threatening letter or phone call then seeking to hire a stranger to trace it back rather than calling in the authorities.
Of course, that is why these online scams—and other scams such as the “419 scams” continue to work: people don’t think to contact appropriate authorities. And when some fall for it, it encourages the spammers to keep on—increasing the pool of victims.
(And yes, I am ignoring the difficulty of actually tracing email back to a source: that isn’t the point of this particular post.)
This new release of our testbed software provides users with full control of experimental PCs instead of being limited to running VMware images:
Experimental PCs can be rebooted at will
There is a LiveCD in the experimental PCs, which will take a root password that you specify before rebooting the PC
Users are now able to replace the operating system installed by default on experimental PCs, and gain full control
The host operating system for VMware is restored after an experiment.
This facilitates experiments with other virtualization technologies (e.g, Xen), or with operating systems or software that don’t interact in the desired manner with VMware.
When compared with other testbeds such as Deter, the differences are that:
You should be able to run anything on ReAssure, that is compatible with the hardware;
You may try to attack the ReAssure testbed itself;
Malicious software should have great difficulty escaping the testbed (if not using exp01 and exp02, the computers set aside for updating images);
Your experiments using VMware images are portable;
You can take VMware snapshots;
As before, you can still:
Use complex network topographies for your experiments, with high bandwidth utilization on each (Gbit ethernet)
Extend reservations or stop experiments at will;
Use ISO images and VMware appliances;
Share image files
Cooperate remotely with other people, and give them access to the PCs in one of your experiments
Update your images from two of our experimental PCs that allow connections to the outside (exp01 and exp02)
Under the hood changes:
The switch management now uses a UNIX domain server instead of a script started by cron. This increases the responsiveness of the system, allows checking the state of the switch directly in real time, and allows self-test results to be displayed on the web interface (for administrators).
The upload mechanism now uses a UNIX domain server instead of a script started by cron. This increases the responsiveness of the system and allows self-test results to be displayed on the web interface (for administrators).
The power state of the experimental PCs is controlled via IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) on an isolated network
Visit the project home page, the testbed management interface itself, or download the open source software. The ReAssure testbed was developed using an MRI grant from NSF (No. 0420906).
