News

October 2024

Cyber resilience matters: KAUST R&D strengthens KSA systems amid IT outages

1 min read · Tue, Oct 8 2024

News Clip News

KAUST is leading efforts to enhance cybersecurity in Saudi Arabia and beyond, particularly in the wake of recent incidents like the CrowdStrike software disruption, by conducting cutting-edge research aimed at securing critical infrastructure, developing practical solutions for vulnerabilities, and fostering collaboration between academia, industry, and government to build resilient digital systems essential for national security.

January 2024

The KAUST SENTRY team cracks the code of success at CSAW'23

1 min read · Thu, Jan 18 2024

Awards News

KAUST SENTRY team dominate CSAW'23 with back-to-back wins in hardware security and robotics challenges.

October 2023

April 2023

An Effective Security Scheme for Attacks on Sample Value Messages in IEC 61850 Automated Substations

1 min read · Sun, Apr 30 2023

News

cybersecurity cyber-physical energy systems iec61850 substations

The trend of transforming substations into smart automated facilities has led to their swift digitalization and automation. To facilitate data exchange among equipment within these substations, the IEC 61850 standard has become the predominant standard. However, this standardization has inadvertently made these substations more susceptible to cyberattacks, which is a significant concern given the confidential information that is transmitted. As a result, cybersecurity in substations is becoming an increasingly critical topic. IEC 62351 standard provides guidelines and considerations for

December 2022

Simple hardware to defend microgrid attacks

1 min read · Mon, Dec 5 2022

News

cybersecurity hardware security

An inexpensive piece of hardware integrated with solar panel controllers can protect isolated power networks from cyberattacks.

November 2022

October 2022

August 2022

Summer Internships at SENTRY

1 min read · Thu, Aug 4 2022

News

Saudi Summer Internship machine learning blockchain power systems

SENTRY lab hosted three Saudi Summer Internship Students from US universities to collaborate on our current research projects.

June 2022

The security of the Internet of Things in our society

1 min read · Thu, Jun 2 2022

News

Technology and innovation are in constant evolution providing new services, products and solutions at the swiftest pace in human history. Progress and competitiveness incentivize businesses to pursue a continuous improvement that we expect will benefit society as a whole. Still, the speed at which all these changes arrive in society make it difficult for a proper analysis of the implications regarding personal aspects such as privacy and security. Regulatory bodies struggle to seek a balance in the laws to keep allowing innovation in products and technologies to market without hindering rights

March 2022

Load-Altering Attacks Against Power Grids under Low-Inertia Conditions

1 min read · Thu, Mar 10 2022

News

Load-altering attacks cybersecurity cyber-physical energy systems

Load-Altering Attacks Against Power Grids under COVID-19 Low-Inertia Conditions: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our society by forcing shutdowns and shifting the way people interacted worldwide. In relation to the impacts on the electric grid, it created a significant decrease in energy demands across the globe. Recent studies have shown that the low demand conditions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns combined with large renewable generation have resulted in extremely low-inertia grid conditions. In our work, in collaboration with Subhash Lakshminarayana, University of Warwick, UK, and Juan

February 2022

Blocking microgrid cyberattacks to keep the power flowing

1 min read · Tue, Feb 15 2022

News

cybersecurity smart grids resilience Cyber attacks and defenses

Power grids have become far more complex in recent decades due to energy demands, environmental regulations and small-scale renewable energy systems that turn businesses and individuals into combined consumer-producers. One way to ensure that power supplies remain resilient is to create small groups of sources and loads called microgrids. Microgrids can operate independently of the main grid when required, such as supporting hospitals during natural disasters, for example. As microgrids grow more complex, they require sophisticated computer networks to coordinate, control and distribute

January 2022

Hardware-based Malware Detectors Actually Work: Transition to Practice After a Decade of Research

1 min read · Sun, Jan 30 2022

News

hardware security

HPC-based Malware Detectors Actually Work: Transition to Practice After a Decade of Research: Our recent work has come out as the result of our research on HPC (hardware performance counters) security in the last decade. During this time, HPC-based malware detection transitioned from academic research through government transition to industry adoption. In this paper, we outline this evolution by presenting use cases on critical power grid infrastructure protection as part of DARPA RADICS program, as well as describing how HPCs are utilized within Intel’s HPC-based Threat Detection Technology

December 2021

Secure Firmware Updates on Embedded Systems

1 min read · Tue, Dec 21 2021

News

firmware updates embedded systems IoT hardware security

With the advancement of Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology, embedded devices have increasingly permeated our daily lives. Such devices allow physical objects to become integrable with information. As a result, embedded devices are increasingly interdependent and, in many cases, important to our safety. For example, critical domains such as Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are being integrated into Industrial IoT (IIoT) embedded systems in order to augment traditional control systems with wireless sensing services and provide better automation through multiple sensors and measurement points

November 2021

KAUST SENTRY team wins 2021 Cybersecurity Games & Conference Embedded Security Challenge

1 min read · Wed, Nov 24 2021

News

resilience cybersecurity

The SENTRY Lab team wins the 18th annual CSAW Cybersecurity Games & Conference’s (CSAW '21) Embedded Security Challenge (ESC).

October 2021

Meet KAUST new student: Ioannis Zografopoulos

1 min read · Wed, Oct 6 2021

News

cyber-physical systems embedded systems cybersecurity

Ioannis Zografopoulos is a Ph.D. student who joined KAUST this fall as a Ph.D. candidate and member of the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems (SENTRY) Lab under the supervision of Professor Charalambos Konstantinou. Zografopoulos believes that KAUST's renowned faculty, global reputation and research infrastructure make the University the ideal environment for him to develop high-quality, impactful research.

September 2021