Project Details
[Return to Previous Page]Project Zidane: Developing a Threat Informed MISP Capability for Deployable Microreactor Programs
Company: Idaho National Laboratory
Major(s):
Primary: CMPSC
Secondary: ME
Optional: EGEE
Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO
Intellectual Property: NO
Project Zidane focuses on developing a prototype cyber threat intelligence capability for a transportable microreactor program. The project is inspired by publicly available concepts associated with advanced and transportable nuclear energy systems but does not represent any actual reactor, facility, organization, system architecture, or security posture. Over the course of the project we will examin how microreactor programs might receive cybersecurity information from government agencies, technology vendors, security researchers, and other public sources. Currently, this information is often broad, duplicative, inconsistently structured, and not written specifically for the nuclear sector. The student team will design a process for identifying which publicly reported cyber campaigns may be relevant to the mission, technologies, suppliers, operating environment, and supporting infrastructure of a transportable microreactor program. Students will learn the fundamentals of cyber threat intelligence collection, source evaluation, campaign analysis, and intelligence reporting. They will use MITRE ATTACK to describe observed adversary tactics and techniques and will learn how to organize campaign information within the Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP). Vulnerabilities may be included when they are relevant to a documented campaign, but the primary focus will be on evaluating adversary campaigns, behaviors, targeting patterns, and defensive implications. The student team will select one or more defined areas of focus, such as supply chain compromise, remote access, engineering environments, operational technology, microgrid dependencies, ransomware, defense industry targeting, or advanced technology espionage. The team will develop criteria for determining whether a campaign is directly relevant, strongly analogous, generally instructive, or outside the scope of the fictional program. The final prototype will demonstrate how publicly available threat information can be collected, evaluated, structured, enriched, and communicated to support defensive decision making. Automation will be limited to a manageable function that reduces analyst workload, such as identifying potentially relevant reports, importing structured data, enriching campaign records, identifying duplicate information, or generating an analyst review queue. Final relevance and confidence determinations will remain the responsibility of the analyst. All research will use publicly available information. Students will not scan, test, access, or interact with operational systems, nuclear facilities, vendors, or other external organizations. Project Zidane is an academic scenario and all system descriptions, assumptions, and conclusions will be fictional.
