SBIR-STTR Award

Vigilant Cyber Systems, Inc. (VCS) proposes to design and develop a Toolkit for Assessing Electromagnetic (EM) Disruption Recovery (TAEMDR) to simulate EM disruptions in digital systems and accurately assess operator response to the disruptions. TAEMDR is designed to be intuitive to use allowing test engineers to build very complex models of digital systems of various complexities from simple single board embedded systems to complex systems of systems (e.g. command and control systems and enterprise management systems) by buildup models from sub models using a drag and drop graphical user interface. Once the model of the system under test is crated, TAEMDR provides intuitive interfaces to allow the test engineer to design and conduct the test to determine the bounds of response time, and provides tools for querying and viewing test results.

Benefits:
TAEMDR will include several significant innovations and enhancements to the current state-of-the-art. First, will be based upon a taxonomy of EM disruption effects and mechanisms to simulate those effects in the SUT without actually damaging the system. Second, the system will include drag-and-drop GUI based modeling to allow the creation of complex models from simple blocks. Third, the models and models will be store is an open XML format to allow for a community of users to share models minimizing duplication of effort. Fourth, TAEMDR will include automation tools to create test sets and automate the execution of tests to minimize test engineer time. These automation features will leverage the lessons learned from the DARPA research on the National Cyber Range. Fifth, the system will utilize Vigilant’s Query Manager and View Manager Architecture to allow for interactive query and viewing of test results, allowing test engineers to visualize the results in a manner that allows for better understanding of the overall test results and allows for program managers to use the results of the testing to make informed better decisions.

Keywords:
electromagnetic disruption recovery, electronic warfare, recovery time, taxonomy of electromagnetic disruption effects, scala

The TAEMDR software tool provides users with an intuitive graphical interface by which they can model an arbitrarily complex system under test, design a test set, and then simulate electromagnetic effects on the system under test. The tool provides real-time visualization and data collection during the test and automatically stores test results, including operator actions on the system during the test, in a NoSQL database. TAEMDR also includes a robust Query Manager and View Manager which then allows test directors to review and analyze results from multiple test with a number of different views, to accurately assess operator response to the disruptions, and to provide potential Battle Damage Assessments (BDA) and weapon effect estimations grounded on the actual measurements. ---------- The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) requires surrogate targets for testing HPEM weapons to gauge weapon effectiveness, assess target recovery time following HPEM attack, and test other tools and techniques for use in HPEM engagements such as battle damage assessment (BDA) techniques. Surrogate targets are necessary because actual targets are expensive and in limited supply. For offensive programs, surrogate targets provide a stand-in for adversarial systems during tests, and are designed to be similar to digital systems employed by adversaries. For defensive programs, surrogate targets are used in place of friendly systems to assess the impact should they be subject to electromagnetic attack. Potential targets include, but are not limited to, industrial control systems (ICS), power generation systems, mobile command systems, integrated air defense systems (IADS), and complex air operations center (AOC) networks. To accomplish this development, VCS will modify its training boxes for offensive cyber security training on cyber-physical systems (CPS). These training boxes provide targets for training engineers in offensive cyber techniques, and are conceptually similar to the surrogate targets that will be used for HPEM testing. While the non-defense commercial training boxes are designed for training, this effort will adapt them for HPEM testing to provide a generic target for conducting both real and simulated HPEM attacks. Vigilant will also leverage virtual targets created for offensive cyber testing as part of our research in creating our Cyber Battle Damage Assessment Tool (CyBDAT) under Navy SBIR contract N68335-18-C-0048, targets created for testing our Toolkit for Assessing Electromagnetic Disruption Recovery (TAEMDR) for the USAF SBIR contract FA9451-16-C-0526, and our Electromagnetic Battle Damage Assessment Toolkit (EMBDAT) for the USAF SBIR contract FA9451-20-C-0527. These virtual targets will be improved and implemented in representative hardware.