The first offline event for the Computer Science and Engineering (Cybersecurity) students was organized on May 25, 2022, from 2.30 pm. Professor Kevin Jones (Executive Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering) was the guest of the day and he delivered the eminent lecture on “Cyber-SHIP”. Around 300 students from the first and second years of CSE – CYS, and second-year CSE – AIE attended the Eminent Lecture.
The program started with a prayer song sung by the first-year CSE CYS students. Our beloved Principal Dr. P. Shankar welcomed the guests, faculty members and students to the event. In his welcome address Principal highlighted the role and challenges faced by cybersecurity professionals and emphasized the need for skill up-gradation in the cybersecurity domain. Mrs.Chloe Rowland, Project, and knowledge exchange manager at Plymouth University, gave a brief but insightful talk about the cyber-SHIP lab at the University of Plymouth.
Dr. Kevin Jones started his talk with an introduction to the marine economy and about cyber security threats marine vessels will be encountering soon and its impact on the economy. He discussed that cybersecurity for the vessels is becoming a series threat. The guest explained about the attack vector which can be exploited to disturb the Economy of countries like the USA, Australia, Japan, etc. He spoke about real-life vulnerabilities existing in commercial ships like real-time attack vector simulation and the impact of cyberattacks on Maritime like taking control over the direction wheel, making brakes fail, etc.
Dr. Kevin also shared simple techniques to handle cyberattacks and their mitigation, he continued his talk about Cyber- SHIP lab which is continuously working to improve Marine -time suavity by providing advanced training to security Researchers. This research lab has researchers from various streams with expertise in cybersecurity, marine engineering, psychologists and historians. Cyber-SHIP Lab is a unique, hardware-based maritime cyber security research and development platform that uses the concept of Hardware-TWIN.
The guest also informed the audience that cyber – SHIP lab conducts Hackathon and project events to various researchers to spot new types of vulnerabilities that can be exploited with bad intentions. He also discussed a case study with a specific example of Port of Valencia, Spain and how attackers may take control of the vessel and change its path which may capsize the vessel blocking the entire port. By doing so the attacker may be successful in blocking the port from normal operations which may cause a heavy loss to the countries economy and a great inconvenience to the people. He explained elaborately about the attack vectors when the real data is manipulated using various attacks like MITM, ARP poisoning DOS Attacks, etc.
In the end, there was an interesting and interactive session with the faculty members and the students. Captain Prasad Mani sir conveyed his experience at Plymouth University and shared his thoughts on the various options for higher studies and internships that may be opened up for the students to work in the cyber-SHIP lab.
Dr. Prasanna Kumar (Chairperson, Department of Computer Science and Engineering) delivered the vote of thanks and this session was a great learning experience for the students and faculties.
