| NSF Org: |
DGE Division Of Graduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 23, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 23, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1748950 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Victor Piotrowski
vpiotrow@nsf.gov (703)292-5141 DGE Division Of Graduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $179,409.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $179,409.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
300 BOSTON POST RD WEST HAVEN CT US 06516-1916 (203)932-7000 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
CT US 06516-1916 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | CYBERCORPS: SCHLAR FOR SER |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Virtual Reality (VR) is a medium that has the potential to transform everyday lives. It immerses the user into a full, 360-degree virtual environment, obscuring the user's view of physical space. VR is an emerging technology but is already present in many modern applications, including engineering, military, healthcare, education, real estate, tourism, social networking, games, retail, and live events. In 2016, 89 million VR headsets were sold worldwide accompanied by substantial investments in VR technology; however, there is almost no cybersecurity education or research exploration of such systems. The goal of this project is to investigate educational approaches to security issues of VR systems in the intersection of cybersecurity and forensics. The proposed curriculum will be supported by lectures and labs and will be disseminated for wider adoption to spark scientific and workforce readiness related to cybersecurity and forensics of VR technology. A significant part of the project will be conducted by student researchers. The learning modules will be used at the University of New Haven, immediately affecting 60 students, and will be disseminated to wider audience through a partnership with almost 400 non-profit, academic, and government partners.
This is the first attempt to create educational material for cybersecurity aspect of VR systems, an emerging topic in cybersecurity. Although there are many university programs focusing on Human Computer Interaction, and some on VR developer programs, currently there is no curriculum material covering the security and forensics of VR systems. VR presents opportunities for new types of adversary attacks such as the Man In the Room (MIR) attack, which may place an adversary into a simulated space. If this were the case, would we be able to reconstruct the digital evidence that can tell us what happened? As for the hardware units developed for VR usage: are they secure or can they be exploited? Is it possible for an adversary remotely determine a user's physical location or remotely turn on a user's front mounted camera? These are important security questions that need to be addressed while educating future VR developers.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This work has contributed a variety of important results. First, the work was the first to illustrate security weaknesses in adopted Virtual Reality (VR) systems, and novel attacks against them, such as the human joystick attack. We showed in the human joystick attack that we can move a VR user to a location of our liking without their knowledge or consent. This part of the work received worldwide media attention and inspired the creation of a new organization called the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI). Second, the work was the first to present results from the forensic analysis of VR systems, and tools and techniques for recovering digital evidence from a computer's disk, memory and network related to the usage of the VR. Additionally, this project created primary datasets and laboratory exercises that are opened to the public to teach the security and forensics of VR systems. Lastly, the work explored the efficacy of using VR systems in teaching concepts like bagging and tagging of evidence on a crime scene and compared the results to teaching the same concepts in physical space. The overall results were promising and showed that VR may be used in simulated, situated, learning environments to teach such topics, especially during COVID where remote teaching has become of critical importance.
Last Modified: 11/11/2020
Modified by: Ibrahim Baggili
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