"The Implant Was Fatal, At Least On TV"

Gina Kolata's October 29, 2013 NY Times article "The Implant Was Fatal, At Least On  TV" (page D1), discusses Dick Cheney's decision to have the wireless functionality of his pacemaker disabled.

University of Michigan Professor and TerraSwarm Researcher Kevin Fu is quoted in the article:
"My opinion is it is probably unlikely that a remote attack of this nature could happen today,"
Professor Fu emphasized the word "probably" and was later quoted as saying "There can always be a flaw we are unaware of".

The article is available on the NY Times website as "Of Fact, Fiction and Cheney's Defibrillator".

Proceedings for the 2013 Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems (MSCPES) Berkeley are available

The Proceedings for the 2013 Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems (MSCPES), held at Berkeley on May 20, 2013, are now available from IEEE Explore
The scope of the workshop was:

Modern energy systems combine information technology, electrical and thermal infrastructure, autonomous roles and interact with other systems like markets and regulations. Existing modeling and simulation tools are not capable to cover such systems in all of their aspects, new languages, methods and tools are necessary. A combination of universal modeling languages like Modelica and established, specialized tools like grid simulators and telecommunication simulators is necessary. This leads to modeling and co-simulating hybrid systems where for instance a multi-agent framework and an electric grid simulator are combined to investigate smart electric vehicle charging algorithms. It is especially the potential size of such systems that constitute a challenge for modeling and simulation. Implementing these future CPS are another substantial challenge. The designed algorithms need to be compact, computationally inexpensive, potentially self-organizing and intrinsically stable if applied to real energy systems. New methods and alternative ways are necessary to overcome these challenges.

TerraSwarm researchers presented the work below:

• Ilge Akkaya, Edward A. Lee, Patricia Derler. Model-Based Evaluation of GPS Spoofing Attacks on Power Grid Sensors, IEEE Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, 20, May, 2013.

Professor George Pappas' NSF CPS-PI Meeting Keynote features TerraSwarm

University of Pennsylvania Professor George Pappas presented a Science of CPS Keynote at the NSF 2013 CPS Principal Investigators' Meeting, Arlington.  The keynote was titled, "Differential Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems." To illustrate that the time is now for this research, Pappas used the TSensors Summit and TerraSwarm.

Pappas' summary points were:

• Many cyber-physical applications raise privacy concerns that need to be addressed to encourage user participation.
• There is a need for privacy-preserving mechanisms for various types of dynamic systems and data.
• Characterizing privacy-utility tradeoffs requires a quantitative definition of privacy.
• System and control theoretic tools (optimal estimators, system gains) can be used to design differentially private mechanisms

Reference:
George Pappas. Differential Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems, Talk or presentation, 17, October, 2013; Science of CPS Keynote at the NSF 2013 CPS Principal Investigators' Meeting, Arlington.

Slashdot: Ask Professor Kevin Fu About Medical Device Security

Professor Kevin Fu of the University of Michigan is fielding questions on Slashdot:

  "Kevin Fu is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. He heads a research group on medical-device security, Archimedes, that works to find vulnerabilities in medical equipment. WattsUpDoc, a system that can detect malware on medical devices by monitoring changes in power consumption, is based on his work. Professor Fu has agreed to put down the pacemakers for a moment and answer your questions about his work and medical device security in general. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post."

Professor Fu also participates in the TerraSwarm Research Center.