Cyber-Physical Systems & Critical Infrastructure Security
Critical infrastructure — the power grid, water treatment systems, manufacturing facilities, and maritime vessels — increasingly relies on networked, computerized control. These cyber-physical systems (CPS) were often built without security in mind, and when they are compromised, the consequences are physical: blackouts, halted production lines, or unsafe operating conditions. This research discovers vulnerabilities in these systems at scale, measures their real-world exposure, and develops techniques to make critical infrastructure more resilient to cyberattack.
IEEE S&P’27: She Spoofed Sea Ships by the Sea Shore: Measuring Large-Scale GPS Spoofing in Global Maritime Traffic [Paper]: This work presents the first large-scale measurement study of maritime GPS spoofing, building a motion-aware framework that analyzes global Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from more than 367,000 vessels to detect regionally correlated GPS spoofing. The study identifies 31 persistent anomalous hotspots worldwide, at least 22 with strong evidence of spoofing, including previously undocumented spoofing in the Red Sea that predated the grounding of the container ship MSC Antonia, and spoofing in the Strait of Hormuz more than a year before the 2026 Iran war disrupted shipping there.
HICSS’27: Analyzing the Cyber Resilience of Distribution Systems with Vulnerable Inverter-Based Resources [Paper]: This work develops a cyber-physical attack framework in which an adversary manipulates compromised solar inverters to maximize voltage violations on a distribution feeder. Using mixed-integer optimization over a linearized power-flow model, validated against full AC power-flow simulation, the results show that compromising as little as 10–25% of strategically selected inverters can drive multiple buses into unsafe voltage conditions — highlighting the risk that rising distributed-solar penetration poses to grid stability.
ACM CCS’26: Grid Trouble in Paradise: Uncovering Vulnerable Distributed Energy Resources and Their Grid-Level Risks [Paper]: This Internet-wide measurement study identifies tens of thousands of Internet-exposed distributed energy resources (DERs) — solar inverters, meters, and gateway controllers — many reachable without authentication. The study characterizes these exposures and connects them to concrete grid-level risk, motivating the attack-budget framework used in the companion HICSS’27 paper.
ACM CCS’26: Batten the Hatches: Cybersecurity with Military Mariners [Paper]: This study examines the cybersecurity posture of military maritime systems, extending prior work on civilian mariners to a defense context and identifying practical gaps in how shipboard personnel understand and respond to cyber threats.
IMECE’26: CIE Methods for Modern Manufacturing (ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, IMECE2026-192577) [Paper]: This paper applies Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) principles to manufacturing operations, outlining how security-by-design methods can be used to protect factories and industrial facilities from cyberattack.
ACM CCS’25: One Video to Steal Them All: 3D-Printing IP Theft through Optical Side-Channels [Paper]: This work demonstrates that the digital blueprint of a 3D-printed object can be reconstructed by an outside observer simply by recording the optical emissions produced by the printer head during operation, revealing a novel side-channel attack that requires no access to the printer’s network or files. The findings motivated a follow-on AI-enabled digital-twin defense, now the basis of a provisional patent, for detecting tampering and IP theft in 3D-printing operations.
ACM CCS’25: A Sea of Cyber Threats: Maritime Cybersecurity from the Perspective of Mariners [Paper]: This human-centered study surveys working mariners to understand the cybersecurity threats they encounter, their security awareness, and the practical barriers that prevent them from protecting shipboard systems — revealing gaps between engineering assumptions and real-world maritime operations.
ACM CCS’24: Release the Hounds! Automated Inference and Empirical Security Evaluation of Field-Deployed PLCs Using Active Network Data [Paper]: This work develops PLCHound, a technique for passively and safely fingerprinting Internet-connected Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) — the devices that control equipment at power substations, water treatment plants, and factories — without directly probing live infrastructure. PLCHound identified roughly 37x more exposed PLCs than existing scanning tools, and after affected organizations were notified, 34% of identified devices were taken offline within a month.
IEEE P3528: Guide for Cyber Informed Engineering Curricula (IEEE Standards Working Group, in development): Contributes to the working group developing this international standard, which defines how educational institutions incorporate Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) principles into curricula worldwide.
Cyber Informed Engineering (CIE) Curriculum Guide (Idaho National Laboratory) [v2, university adoption]: This framework and resource guide, developed with Idaho National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, supports integrating security-by-design engineering principles into university engineering curricula nationwide.