Cyber Operations

Argonne National Laboratory is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) largest research centers. The Laboratory's 3,000 employees include more than 1,000 scientists and engineers, 750 of whom hold doctorate degrees. With an annual operating budget of approximately $500 million, the Laboratory supports hundreds of research projects on topics ranging from nanomaterials to astrophysics and addressing complex challenges from global climate change to biofuels. Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations. Below we highlight a sampling of Argonne projects related to operational Cyber Security, highlighting the mathematics, computer science, and engineering capabilities of the Laboratory.

• Authentication
• Distributed Systems
• Scientific Data Acquisition
• Secure Collaboration Platforms
• Network Survivability
• Secure Infrastructure Design
• Intrusion Detection
• Modeling and Simulation
• Emergency Computation Control

Authentication

Argonne's knowledge of Microsoft Active Directory® (Kerberos), certificate, and CAC/PIV authentication technologies enables end-to-end single sign-on. These technologies provide information surety by enabling the warfighter to quickly and confidently authenticate to local and remote resources using a single credential.

Information is much more readily accessible to the warfighter, increasing situational awareness and response options. Single credentials also enable resource providers to rapidly provision responders.

• Universal Certificate Authentication to Key Applications at Argonne National Laboratory (268kb pdf)

Distributed Systems

Argonne's Globus Toolkit is an open source-software toolkit used by hundreds of projects worldwide to build Grid systems — combining computers, networks, instruments, and applications. One example, a project managed by Argonne, is the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid Project, which integrates high-performance computers, data resources, and experimental facilities around the country and serves 4,000 scientists using high-performance networks, secure middleware, and relying on Argonne's project management expertise.

Argonne expertise in secure distributed systems is the result of practical experience, providing leadership in both the moderate assurance Federal Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and in the more cutting-edge scientific grid computing PKI arena as well. Argonne’s international collaborations in these activities involve over 30 countries in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Public key technologies are the basis for many encryption applications.

Scientific Data Acquisition

Data acquisition for DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program is based on a worldwide network involving remote and isolated facilities. This program utilizes various network technologies and satellite communication systems. Because of the high visibility of climate data, Argonne designed the ARM network for cyber survivability.

Secure Collaboration Platforms

The Access Grid® is an integrated distance collaboration platform utilizing multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, interfaces to Grid middleware, and visualization environments to support group interactions involving up to dozens of locations and hundreds of individuals.

The Access Grid is an integrated control enabler that can provide warfighters with situational awareness and a Common Operational Picture and Operations Integration by supporting large-scale collaborative work sessions coupled with access to digital information.

Network Survivability

Using commercial network design and analysis technologies, Argonne experts analyze fielded networks for traffic flows, performance, survivability, and architecture validation. Network analysis is essential for maintaining information surety and preventing network disruption.

Secure Infrastructure Design

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are used widely in industry to monitor and control remote equipment from a central facility. Accordingly SCADA systems are a significant network warfare theater. Argonne has performed extensive analysis of SCADA systems, assessing reliability based on such parameters as age, manufacturer, operating system, access points, security, and redundancy control features. Argonne's experts have assisted DOE in determining best practice guidelines for SCADA equipment. Argonne is currently deploying SCADA equipment on a controlled network for security testing.

Intrusion Detection

Intrusion detection systems (IDS) are an essential aspect of defensive counter cyber operations. Argonne has developed situationally aware IDS techniques that automatically modify defense mechanisms to react to adversary intrusion attempts. Netflow data is mined to detect malicious behavior. Argonne's design uses a multisite architecture that provides additional intelligence and surveillance. In early operation today, this system enables Argonne and multiple partner sites to share IDS information using a common repository. Sites gain predictive battlespace awareness based on the real-time experience of other sites, effectively transforming the collective IDS systems at multiple sites into a security sensor network.

Sharing IDS data permits Network Warfare Operations to detect attacks early, before they engulf the community. Unaffected sites can prepare a response that is on time and on target. Six institutions now share IDS event data. Future plans include providing data to upstream network providers to enable offensive counter cyber operations and evaluation of peer-to-peer communications.

Modeling and Simulation

Modeling and simulation provide predictive battlespace awareness. They depict the interactions of system components and the system — not as separate entities but as a whole. Argonne experts in modeling, simulation, and visualization perform computational experiments (simulations over time) for both physical and social systems. Focus areas include agent-based models, sensor monitoring systems, scientific visualization, data mining, and military and emergency management logistics planning. Argonne's computational resources include a 500-teraflop IBM BlueGene/P system to be operational in early 2008.

Emergency Computation Control

Argonne has developed SPRUCE, a framework that supports urgent computing on both traditional supercomputers and distributed Grids. Warfighters are provided with transferable right-of-way tokens with varying urgency levels. During an emergency, the token is activated to enable associated computations to obtain necessary resources, displacing normal priority work, enabling decision-makers and warfighters to draw upon diverse distributed resources in a timely manner to address the unique demands posed by the adversary.