insure 2024 program

created on 2024-08-01

tags: [career, cysec, coding]
- - -

related links (for more info?)

so last summer, i did a research thing with some people. it was fun.

last summer, i went to iowa university to do some cybersecurity research. when i first got the offer, i was bit skeptical. after all, i had never traveled alone up to this point, and i was a bit intimidated by the presumed level of mastery that the other researchers had (they expected masters and phd students as well). after a lot of deliberation, i decided to go.

my cohort (12 people including myself) and i had a pretty good time together (at least...i hope so). the duration of this program was 3 weeks (basically the mid-late part of june), and we lived in quads. our goal was to examine the current state of the border gateway protocol (bgp) routing system that is used in autonomous system communications (aka different networks talking to each other).

fig 1 - visiting the 2024 cyber tractor challenge (image citation)

more research details

ultimately, our goal for the 3 weeks was to come up with a report of an emperical simulation of current and proposed bgp ideas. week 1 was supposed to be used for literature review, week 2 was meant for simulation, and week 3 was to be used for preparing the final reports and presentations.

originally, my group (4 out of the 12 people) was going to focus on a new technology called bgp-isec (by people at the university of connecticut, source here). however, after getting the opportunity to meet with the creators of this security (they were extremely cool, thank you for helping us tvt), we found out that it was not feasible to be deployed in the real world to begin with. in the end, we decided to switch gears around the last week to do a detailed simulation of their rov++ protocol - another bgp security (source here).

the simulation itself was conducted using a pypy3 library called bgpy (source here). this simulation was also made by the same people that made the last few papers mentioned above (man, these guys are really serious about this topic). we also played around with the python library "networkx", as it had some pretty sick graph features. all in all, we got a bunch of information from our simulation, and it was an extremely nice learning experience. i dont want to say too much about the specifics since a paper publication might be underway (do not quote me on that), but it was a fun time.

fig 2 - our first presentation! (source: me)

throughout the duration of our research, we had one of the best faculty advisors to ever advise (warning: this is biased): Dr. Berk Gulmezoglu
despite the fact that he is an electrical engineer and mainly specializes in hardware security, he went through the effort to learn as much as he could in order to support our research. he made sure that we had fun and hit deadlines on time. he seemed to enjoy every moment with us (despite the fact that we met so early in the morning all the time), and i think i can speak for the rest of my cohort when i say that he did a fantastic job.

before i go to the next section, i would like to give a big obligatory thanks to my groupmates!

Arrianna Szymczak - extremely goated editor and helped figure out nuances in our simulations
Henry Schmidt - presentation expert and super solid foundation in everything. essentially the "group leader"
Nathan Ferrell - extremely smart and basically taught us the complicated math behind the security protocols

alright, time for the non-research stuff!

non-research stuff

we went on a lot of excursions. i dont want to share pictures that are not publicly available already, but...i can...describe it?

first of all, i got a lot of steps in throughout this program. because the facility was a 15 minute walk from our dorms (not to mention that the closest restaurant was 30-40 minutes as well), i walked a lot. the weather was phenomenal for most of our stay (thank goodness).

fig 3 - the average daily walk (source: me)

we went to play at an arcade after visiting the aforementioned cyber tractor challenge, and we had a blast. i got destroyed in lazer tag, but i was second to none at air hockey (only beaten by the legend, dr. berk). we got to go bowling, and there were several insane plays - 3 of us got 4 strikes in a row. it was crazy.

fig 4 - me ("B") demolishing the bowling scene (source: me)

we went to the campus garden, and it was...huge. i felt so at peace there. there were beautiful plants and a waterfall to top it off. i can't really explain it in words, so here are some pictures.

fig 5 - visiting the campus garden (source: me)

we also went to other places (iowa state capitol, hiking, historical site), but those pictures are for another blog.

conclusion

i had a blast. it was a great time, and im very grateful to everyone that made this happen. i found the research to be very insightful, and the people there were way beyond my standards. i am aware that i might be biased (since this is my first research adventure), but i just hope that i can have the same quality of research facilitation going forward.

bonus (8/2/2024)

i am aware that some of the images are blurry on a desktop viewport. i am not sure why this is, but i will be working on it!