WVU creating live fire exercise facility for cybersecurity
Dec. 15—FAIRMONT — Long the domain of modern action movie tropes, cyber attacks are becoming less fiction than reality.
In 2021, the owner of a pipeline system carrying fuel from Texas to the Southeast suffered a ransomware attack that caused gas supply shortages in Southeast states. Colonial Pipeline, the owner, paid $4.4 billion in ransom money within hours of the attack. It took days for them to fully restore their systems.
Costa Rica lost $30 million a day after a cyberattack aimed at the country's government institutions led to delayed government payments, stifled trade and limited services. And since the outbreak of the war between Ukraine and Russia, both countries have engaged in a cyberwar as intense as the ground one.
Cyberspace can be a dangerous place. However, a new $750,000 grant in funding from the U.S. Department of Education will allow West Virginia University to construct a cybersecurity range to teach students how to overcome these attacks.
"Cyber range, in general, is a term that means a place where we can virtually test cybersecurity concepts," Tom Devine, teaching assistant professor at the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at WVU, said. "Virtually, meaning we're not going to actually release a virus into the world. We're not going to actually hack real existing computers. We need to set up a virtual environment that's in the sandbox, if you will, of the cyber range. And that way, you know, anything we do doesn't escape out into the world."
The cyber range will be put together over the coming year.
Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova, a professor in the same department, will oversee the facility at the WVU Statler College of Engineering and Mineral resources. She said that thanks to a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, the school will receive software and hardware with which to build the cyber range. It will also include a center for industrial control systems, so that students can practice working in a real world environment.
"So what we're trying to do when we educate our students is make sure they have hands-on experience with the most recent threats, malware, viruses, and worms," Goseva-Popstojanova said. "As well as how to make the systems be more resilient to attacks and make the impact of this attack smaller."
Computers now dominate the industrial space. At home, more products like light bulbs and refrigerators come ready to connect to a network for convenience and flexibility. Training to manage this digital infrastructure from outside attack is critical.
"As a country, we are putting more and more computers or digital devices to operate our infrastructure, whether it's gas or water or a power grid," Anurag Srivastava, department chair, said. "We get flexibility, we get better control, we get more efficiency. We get cheaper, we get to do more things in a much smaller time. But there's one thing that also comes with that which is cyber vulnerability."
The creation of this workforce in cybersecurity could also benefit West Virginia's economy.
The state already hosts several prominent digital workspaces, such as NASA, NOAA and the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Morgantown also hosts a variety of smaller companies working in related and adjacent fields. WVU itself has taught cybersecurity classes since the early 2000s. The school is even recognized as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education and Research, a designation bestowed by the National Security Agency.
Goseva-Popstojanova said the need for cybersecurity professionals throughout the country numbers in the hundreds of thousands, creating many opportunities. Many of those opportunities are already here in West Virginia. The infrastructure is here and growing, but it needs a work force.
"It's a really exciting time to be a student of cybersecurity in West Virginia, we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of the massive growth that is in this field," Devine said. "West Virginians are some of the hardest working and smartest people I know. We want to make sure that they're ready to hit the ground running and get those jobs and make our world a little bit safer."
Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com
