Academics & Research News

UH receives $2.6 million grant to prevent cyber attacks

The Department of Homeland Security recently awarded UH a $2.6 million grant for the next three years to prevent cyber attacks.

The grant will be used to protect at risk systems, including the 911 systems routed up in networks across the country. This will essentially prevent hackers from carrying out Distributed Denial of Service cyber attacks.

Associate professor of computer science Weidong Shi is one of the main investigators and said he believes that it is imperative to continue working on the defense systems.

“The current 911 system is not secure,” Shi said. “It can be hacked and will be, and the government knows that. Sources of attack include telephone fraud and extortion.”

Shi outlined possible scenarios including a hacker blocking an ER’s phone line so the ER cannot receive calls. Since 70 percent of 911 calls are from cell phones they are also at risk.

“Attacks have become a higher risk because the 911 systems have moved to a new technology, and it is based on the Internet,” Shi said. “Currently, cell phones have overtaken landlines for most traffic to ER’s. But your phone might have malware or other viruses and then DDoS attacks become harder to prevent.”

Dainis Boumber is a graduate student studying computer science who is working on the project. One of his jobs includes differentiating MP3 files masquerading as real 911 calls.

“I’m trying to disambiguate normal behavior from ambiguities,” Boumber said. “Let’s say someone prerecorded a bunch of MP3’s, and you were calling a 911 center and replaying those MP3’s. The people listening are receiving the calls (that) might be different, and the hacker could change the background noise to make it unique. I am trying to see whether the call has been received or not.”

Professor of computer science and principal investigator Steven Huang said that because of the new technology being used to protect certain systems it is in the government’s best interest to find a way to protect it.

Since the next generation 911 is still in the implementation stage, anything coming out of our research may have an impact on the security of the 911 system,” Huang said.  “This is a rare opportunity that we can be one step ahead of DDoS attackers.”

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