Browsing by Author "Agarwal, Rahul"

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    Graph-Based Simulation for Cyber-Physical Attacks on Smart Buildings
    Agarwal, Rahul (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-04)
    As buildings evolve towards the envisioned smart building paradigm, smart buildings' cyber-security issues and physical security issues are mingling. Although research studies have been conducted to detect and prevent physical (or cyber) intrusions to smart building systems(SBS), it is still unknown (1) how one type of intrusion facilitates the other, and (2) how such synergic attacks compromise the security protection of whole systems. To investigate both research questions, the author proposes a graph-based testbed to simulate cyber-physical attacks on smart buildings. The testbed models both cyber and physical accesses of a smart building in an integrated graph, and simulates diverse cyber-physical attacks to assess their synergic impacts on the building and its systems. In this thesis, the author presents the testbed design and the developed prototype, SHSIM. An experiment is conducted to simulate attacks on multiple smart home designs and to demonstrate the functions and feasibility of the proposed simulation system.
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    Integration and Implementation (INT) CS5604 Fall 2019
    Agarwal, Rahul; Albahar, Hadeel; Roth, Eric; Sen, Malabika; Yu, Lixing (Virginia Tech, 2019-12-11)
    The first major goal of this project is to build a state-of-the-art information storage, retrieval, and analysis system that utilizes the latest technology and industry methods. This system is leveraged to accomplish the second major goal, supporting modern search and browse capabilities for two major content collections: (1) 200,000 ETDs (electronic theses and dissertations), and (2) 14 million settlement documents from the lawsuit wherein 39 U.S. states sued the major tobacco companies. The backbone of the information system is a Docker container cluster running with Rancher and Kubernetes. Information retrieval and visualization is accomplished with containers for Elasticsearch and Kibana, respectively. In addition to traditional searching and browsing, the system supports full-text and metadata searching. Search results include facets as a modern means of browsing among related documents. The system exercises text analysis and machine learning to reveal new properties of collection data. These new properties assist in the generation of available facets. Recommendations are also presented with search results based on associations among documents and with logged user activity. The information system is co-designed by 6 teams of Virginia Tech graduate students, all members of the same computer science class, CS 5604. Although the project is an academic exercise, it is the practice of the teams to work and interact as though they are groups within a company developing a product. These are the teams on this project: Collection Management ETDs (CME), Collection Management Tobacco Settlement Documents (CMT), Elasticsearch (ELS), Front-end and Kibana (FEK), Integration and Implementation (INT), and Text Analysis and Machine Learning (TML). This submission focuses on the work of the Integration (INT) team, which creates and administers Docker containers for each team in addition to administering the cluster infrastructure. Each container is a customized application environment that is specific to the needs of the corresponding team. For example, the ELS team container environment shall include Elasticsearch with its internal associated database. INT also administers the integration of the Ceph data storage system into the CS Department Cloud and provides support for interactions between containers and Ceph. During formative stages of development, INT also has a role in guiding team evaluations of prospective container components. Beyond the project formative stages, INT has the responsibility of deploying containers in a development environment according to mutual specifications agreed upon with each team. The development process is fluid. INT services team requests for new containers and updates to existing containers in a continuous integration process until the first system testing environment is completed. During the development stage INT also collaborates with the CME and CMT teams on the data pipeline subsystems for the ingestion and processing of new collection documents. With the testing environment established, the focus of the INT team shifts toward gathering of system performance data and making any systemic adjustments necessary based on the analysis of testing results. Finally, INT provides a production distribution that includes all embedded Docker containers and sub-embedded Git source code repositories. INT archives this distribution on Docker Hub and deploys it on the Virginia Tech CS Cloud.
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    Study and Redesign of a Semi-public Display: Online Enlightenment
    Montabert, Cyril; Agarwal, Rahul; Lee, Christine; McCrickard, D. Scott (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2007-05-01)
    Semi-public displays are systems designed to strengthen awareness and collaboration among small co-located group environments. Placed in a semi-public space, Online Enlightenment is a physical device associated with MSN® Messenger to provide information regarding the online status of peers. The raison d'être of the system is to leverage group members’ awareness of their peers’ availability through changes of their online status in order to facilitate meeting scheduling, promote opportunistic collaboration, and foster project teamwork without introducing distraction. At an early stage of the development process, this paper presents the results of a usability study of the system and proposes a redesigned mock-up to address the identified deficiencies.