1. GENI, Cybersecurity, and Liberal Arts
Xenia Mountrouidou (Prof. X)

2. Outline
Motivation
Courses & labs
Challenges
Suggestions
Conclusions

3. Challenges
Predominantly undergraduate institutions have limited resources
Experiential learning in cybersecurity requires sanitized labs and large investments

4. Solution
GENI!
Multidisciplinary curriculum: general education courses combined with experiential learning

5. Cybersecurity & Liberal Arts Colleges
Limited faculty
Classes in cyber security every two-three years
General education is mandatory for all students
Humanities
Social sciences
Foreign Languages
Quantitative reasoning & logic
Science

6. Necessity leads to innovation
Cyber Paths: Broadening the Path to the STEM Profession through Cybersecurity Learning

7. Standalone Module
Type
Topics
PUI/LIA Curriculum
Legal issues in CySec
Case study, essay, discussion
HIPPA/FERPA, Computer Security Act, Laws and Authorities, US Patriot Act
Political Science International Studies Social Science
Management
Strategic Plan and Management, Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery
Economics Leadership Social Science
Human Factors
Case study, essay, discussion, hands on exercise
Privacy, Passwords, Usable Security
Humanities Social Science
Attacks and Defense
GENI experiment
IDS, Traffic, Log Analysis, performance
Technology
Cryptography
Hands on exercise
Cryptograms, ciphers, encryption, decryption
Network components and traffic
Traffic and performance analysis, protocol introduction

8. General education undergraduate courses
CS150 - Science Using Computation, Wofford College
Mostly freshmen
Satisfies the general education requirement of quantitative reasoning
20 students max
First Year Experience – Chasing ghosts in the wires, College of Charleston
Only freshmen
Satisfies requirement for general education

9. GENI & Freshmen CS 150 - Wofford: three hour lab on Denial of Service
FYE - CofC: two hours in class lab and homework, IT Components, Traffic analysis
Developed our own “getting started” guide
Windows
Mac
Several iterations of the lab
Putty/terminal
GENI desktop

10. Distributed Denial of Service Lab Module
Pre-installed topology
ping - verification
iperf - performance
Hping3 - DoS
Hypothesis testing

11. Pilot Survey Conducted at Wofford College. Cohort:
15 students
Self-assessment of CS knowledge: 40% novice; 40% intermediate; 20% advanced
Pilot Questionnaire:
I have a better understanding of CS.
I understand how information is transmitted through the internet.
I understand the basics of computer attacks and computer network attacks.
I understand how computer and network attacks can harm me and my organization.
I am considering to take another CS course.

12. Results

13. Comments Q: What did you like best about the GENI lab and why?
I liked the opportunity to take part in a live experiment with real computers.
Doing to the denial of service attack was really cool.
I liked that we did a real world issue in a safe and controlled environment.
Working with terminal and the command line
I feel like the GENI lab was a good opportunity to learn about computer network attacks first hand, because the experiment was a real attack on a real network.
I like that it showed how the networks work from several perspectives and how attacks can happen
I liked best learning about the network attacks and being able to replicate it ourselves.
It was cool to see how flooding a computer actually works rather than it just happens.
I liked how we were able to simulate a real attack. This really puts it into prospective on how hackers can do this to anyone.
I liked how there were images showing you what was happening.
I liked being able to control remote networks through the terminal. It was interesting because it gave me a better idea of the basic / behind-the-scenes of how operating a computer works.

14. Comments Q: What did you like least about the GENI lab.
I did not like how repetitive it was, and how some things took a very long time to do.
I think that my least favorite thing about GENI was trying to get GENI to work.
The GENI infrastructure seemed to be unstable and difficult to work with at times. It's also hard to have a complete understanding of how to perform the lab without already having an understanding in computer science.
Q: Please give any suggestions to improve the GENI lab.
Introduce the types of cyber attacks prior to the lab.
Maybe doing it once before with the entire class on the projector to give us a heads up on what we are doing and to also see if we are doing it right. Then, let the groups run the tests multiple times.
Before the lab and working with GENI have a day where you go over the basics of the command line and terminal

15. Other undergraduate courses
Cryptography and Network Security
Junior/Senior level
Maximum 25 students
In house labs:
Traffic analysis
SDN
Snort IDS installation
Create custom snort alert

16. Intrusion Detection Systems and Mitigation
Goals:
Install Snort IDS on monitor machine
Duplicate all traffic to monitor
Create a custom alert for Snort IDS
Use mitigation script
Drop malicious traffic
Send Spoofed SYN
Send SYN-ACK
Resend SYN-ACK
Attacker
Server
Spoofed Client

17. Covert Channel Communication Lab Module
Goals
Multiplex regular and covert storage channel traffic
Analyze traffic to detect covert communication
Split signal to make covert communication stealth

18. Cybersecurity Capstone Projects & Undergraduate Research
Classroom study
Identify project
Project Preparation
Practice lab material
Fulfill class project
Class Labs/Projects
Define project
Conduct project
Capstone Projects
Advisory Committee/ PIs
Development
Mentoring
Students

19. Resources that we have used
Train the TA
GENI Summer Workshops
GENI Wiki
GENI google groups
UNC GENI Education

20. Student Challenges Student comments:
Difficult to download and use keys and make personal machine work
GENI concept not well understood
Command line
Time limit 

21. Instructor Challenges
Time consuming topology reservations
GENI desktop reservation
Need to have backups! Machines die…
New GENI accounts – follow the instructions, always make sure you have the latest info

22. Benefits Expected Realized Real experimentation Excitement
Better understanding of concepts
Realized
First class is a throw away…
Excitement was achieved
Need to measure more!
Learning goals accomplished?
Is it better to use GENI or local VMs?

23. If I were to start over… Update instructions sooner
Spend time planning
Explain in class what is GENI
Not use putty/terminal with freshmen non-CS majors
Plan early, revise often!

24. Suggestions Courses Tools Data analytics Malware analysis
Network Forensics
Pen testing 
Tools
Remote desktop
Organic IP & other traffic visualization tools

25. Conclusions
Cybersecurity workforce can be diversified with liberal arts students
Experiential cybersecurity learning does not have to be expensive
Realistic experiential learning attracts students to cybersecurity

26. Questions?
Thank you!

27. GENI Cyber Modules & courses