The following is a 2000 Sandia/CA article featuring former CCD program administrators. CCD is now led by Steve Hurd at Sandia/CA.
Student Interns Trained for Cyber Combat!
In the cyber world, there are cops and robbers, spies and sleuths. And there are just plain old cyber-vandals that break into systems just to show they can. As cyber crimes continue to grab headlines, the need for cyber defenders is greater than ever.
More About CCD...
Sandia National Laboratories’ nationally recognized Center for Cyber Defenders internship program is making great strides in training college and university students how to protect electronic information and defend computer systems and networks from the bad guys.
“Last year, the students brought tremendous benefits to the program, enabling us to examine more than 400 attack codes that we otherwise would not have been able to investigate,” said program leader Fred Cohen. “It also helped us assemble systems now moving into use in defending (Sandia’s) infrastructure.”
The program started in 1998 as a collaboration between Department of Energy Defense Programs’ Education Department, faculty members at Las Positas and Chabot Colleges, and Sandia information security gurus Cohen and Dick Isler. Since then, participants have racked up an impressive record of accomplishments that includes creating a database of known attack techniques and defense methods, analyzing hundreds of published attack techniques gleaned from Internet sites, and building prototype networks that demonstrate concepts now being used in cyber-infrastructure protection at Sandia. The program also was the subject of a recent Washington Post article titled “Launching a Counteroffensive in Cyberspace.”
Cohen is an expert in computer forensics—tracking digital crimes—and invented the computer virus in 1983 while a graduate student at the University of Southern California. He and other Sandia computer security experts serve as mentors to students in the program and teach classes on topics related to computer and network security.
The CCD program has received attention both locally and nationally for its work with “Cyber-Cops”—police investigators who work the Internet and tackle cyber crimes nationwide—and for their work on defending systems against the most commonly used attack techniques. The program’s tools and Web capabilities are used at the annual High-Tech Crime Investigators Association (HTCIA) meeting, where hundreds of cyber-cops are trained on aspects of Internet attack, defense, and forensics using the CCD-designed and implemented Cyber-Cops network. The interaction between students and professional investigators is especially important in the development of the CCD program.
Program Components and Requirements...
Candidates for the program are computer science students with a
minimum GPA of 3.2 (on a 4.0 scale), who are currently enrolled
in a college or university and are U.S. citizens. The program is
available throughout the year.
The program combines research with education, and the goal is to
train cyber defenders who could move into computer security jobs
at Sandia. CCD students receive onsite training, attend weekly information technology seminars, and participate in activities aimed at securing Sandia’s information system.
Students are expected to gain skills in:
- Basic information security
- Operating system analysis
- Network configuration and management
- Network programming
- Firewall design and implementation
- Protection testing and red teaming
- Virus and other malicious code defense
- People skills in the work environment
- Familiarity with current network operations
- Business operations and work experience
- Operating system and network programming
- Incident investigation and response
By the end of the program, students will be able to:
- Configure a complex of computers from the ground up into a fully operational and reasonably efficient computer network
- Secure that network to a reasonable extent from external threats and to a lesser extent from internal threats
- Implement off-the-shelf protections including cryptographic systems, normal operating systems controls, and backups
- Understand the implications of protection decisions and protection failures to an organization and be able to explain these things to a reasonable level
For further information, please contact Kelly Nykodym
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