New Forms of Experiential Education on Cyber-Physical Security Yunsi Fei Keywords Competition Attack and defense Team work New Forms of Experiential Education on Cyber-Physical Security

Why? NU’s unique brand of experiential learning and co-op program have been well recognized Cyber and physical security is a requirement of many real-world systems and infrastructures Secure design and implementation (defense) require deep understanding of vulnerabilities – attacks Competition-based lab course will be an effective and innovative form of experiential education on practical security

What? Embedded Catch-the-Flag Competition Two phases Six weeks of secure design and implementation of a digital lock/PIN system Six weeks of hacking on other teams’ implementations, catch the flags Final project presentation

How? Learning objectives Advisor-student interaction Learn the basic design principles for secure embedded systems Apply these principles into the real design and implementation Identify vulnerabilities of an embedded device and launch real attacks Understand the hacking process and perform ethic hacking. Advisor-student interaction More hands-off advising – similar to research Open-ended design and flexibility Advisor suggests reading materials, helps the design process, introduces possible attacks, sets up timeline and checkpoints, and monitors progress Encourage team work

Where? Northeastern University, and/or other universities in the New England area Pilot course in Spring 2016: 4 credit Independent Study Two NU teams participated in a competition among four universities Each team 8 students (mostly senior ECE students) Collaborative team work Vigorous testing, debugging, and reprogramming Report and presentation

Prognosis Competition Effective and engaging competition design Allocation of time between the two phases More post-competition feedback on the design, implementation, and attacks Appropriate team size How to make the competition multi-disciplinary – cyber, physical, infrastructure, and social engineering? How to involve more advisors/faculty members? How to evaluate the class?