PROTECTING INFRASTRUCTURE AND PRIVACY THROUGH CYBERSECURITY

Multidisciplinary approaches tackle new threats as technology becomes more interconnected

BY ASHLEY PICCONE

As today’s networks become more interconnected and complex, security risks become more evident. Malicious attackers can remotely intrude into systems and access sensitive information and manipulate transactions. Phishing emails abound, and smart devices, like cameras and speakers, present even further opportunities to invade privacy. On a larger scale, security breaches in critical infrastructure, such as in natural gas pipelines, transportation, water resources, healthcare, food and agriculture, can have severe consequences.

That widespread and daily relevance is what interests associate professor of computer science Chuan Yue and inspires his research into the security of cyber systems within Mines’ Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy. “The nature of cybersecurity problems remains the same, but the scope is growing much larger,” he said.

Working with Mines’ CSSP, an interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science, electrical engineering, social science, and economics and business faculty, Yue seeks to solve challenges related to web, mobile, Internet of Things and cloud systems and does so in alignment with the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Design Strategic Plan.

CSSP researchers are prepared to defend against, and learn from, malicious cyberattacks. They send browsers to visit tens of thousands of websites, where they gather information about the pages, their protections and their vulnerabilities. Analysis informs another component of their strategy: designing new features and functionalities to protect users.

“Program analysis looks to see if website vulnerabilities are related to the programming language,” said Yue. “That, together with machine learning techniques, helps us analyze what could be wrong and what should be improved.”

Data collection and analysis inform strategies to design better websites and devices to protect users. But perhaps more important is teaching users to protect themselves. Mines researchers from business, economics and social sciences work with Yue to measure user understanding of attacks and determine best practices for their engagement and education.

“Cybersecurity is interdisciplinary,” said Yue. “Hackers have financial incentives, so we have a strong collaboration on the economics perspective. From the social, behavioral side, how attackers perform and how vulnerable people perform are related to human nature.”

Working in the other direction, Yue and his team help with quality control of crowdsourced surveys, which are used to collect important data for the social, behavioral and economic sciences and can easily be manipulated by attackers. Through these collaborations and by allying with other engineering-focused researchers at Mines, Yue hopes to build safer web systems, technology and critical infrastructure from the ground up. That begins at the individual level.

“Largely, security and privacy problems are due to humans,” said Yue. “If we can identify trends in potential risks and educate users, or regular people, about those risks, then when they visit different websites they will be more cautious and keep themselves and others safe.”

“To observe a full-scale tall building with a new lateral system that we believe will be resilient and even damage-free under large earthquakes—that is invaluable, not only for the science community but also the engineering community around the globe. This will add a more sustainable building option for seismically active regions.”

Globally, more than a billion people live in earthquake zones, and the urban population in these areas is expected to grow over the coming decades. The need for earthquake-safe buildings will become increasingly important, but safe structures in seismic zones haven’t traditionally been made from sustainable building materials—another concern for the future.

Shiling Pei, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Mines, hopes his research in wood construction will show that using wood materials is a sustainable alternative that’s also seismically sound— even in tall buildings. Pei is a principal investigator on the Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Tallwood Project, a National Science Foundationfunded research collaboration between Mines and five other U.S. universities, that is developing a seismic design methodology for wood buildings that, to meet demand in urban areas, climb eight to 18 stories into the sky.

To test their design, Pei and his colleagues spent summer 2022 in San Diego, where the project is erecting a 10-story mass-wood building on the NSF’s outdoor shake table at full scale. When construction is complete in December 2022, the researchers plan to run about 40 seismic simulations on the building, which is constructed with mass timber gravity framing and an innovative lateral system made of wood panels that freely rock to absorb an earthquake’s energy.

Rocking walls aren’t new—Pei said they were first tested and used with concrete construction. But concrete rocking walls tend to crack during large earthquakes and are difficult to repair. “The wood gives it another layer of resiliency guarantee,” he said. The team’s tallwood design uses mass timber construction that, rather than building a frame using smaller dimensional lumber such as two-byfours, consists of large engineered wood panels glued or nailed together. In tallwood building design, the rocking wall is a wood panel with pre-stressed steel tension rods tying it to the foundation.

“The materials—just steel rods and wood panels—they’re not fancy, but with the design procedure developed in

Nheri Tallwood Project Breakdown

The shake table use is funded by the National Science Foundation, the primary funder of this project.

The experimental facility is supported by the NHERI program.

USDA US Forest Services is the second-largest funder of this research, supporting testing and related R&D on mass timber research at Mines for close to $1 million over the past six years.

this project, you can target a certain level of earthquake intensity and make most of the building components to remain undamaged,” he said. “Because the post-tensioned steel rods will remain elastic during the earthquakes, the building can always come back to plumb after the shake.” Even though building materials such as concrete and steel have a high carbon cost, using wood as a sustainable building material might still seem counterintuitive. “There’s a forced perception that the lumber industry is cutting down forests,” Pei said. “But in most developed countries, the reputable wood industry companies are typically regulated to use wood from sustainably managed forests. Once you have a well-established industry, sustainability becomes something that they strive to achieve for their own benefit. They own the land, so they would like to keep growing trees again and again to make money out of it for the years to come.” The industry also manages the forests for fire because it will be their loss,” he said. “Especially under climate change, if you don’t have the money and capital going in to take care of the forest, it can end up getting impacted more negatively by climate change.”

Countries that already have a rich tradition of building with timber have already shown their interest in this style of building. “In Europe and Japan, they have heavy timber tradition as part of their history, so they’ll be the early adopters,” Pei said. “I firmly believe in the U.S., we’ll also be a big player in mass timber, because we use a lot of wood material in existing building stock already.”

At full scale, the shake table test of a 10-story building will provide an incredible proof-of-concept for the construction industry and the public in places like California, British Columbia, and earthquake-prone cities in Italy and Japan, where Pei said they have active research and industry collaborators in the project.

Pei said, “To observe a full-scale tall building with a new lateral system that we believe will be resilient and even damage-free under large earthquakes—that is invaluable, not only for the science community but also the engineering community around the globe. This will add a more sustainable building option for seismically active regions.”

Universities on the research team:

Colorado School of Mines

University of Washington

University of Nevada, Reno

Colorado State University

Washington State University

Lehigh University

$3.8 million

Academic collaborators:

Oregon State University

Michigan Technological University

University of California

San Diego

Kyoto University in funding to test the 10-story building on the shake table