Rafiullah Khan

Detecting SQL Injection (SQLi) attacks is crucial for web-based data center security, but it is challenging to balance accuracy and computational efficiency, especially in high-speed networks. Traditional methods struggle with this balance, while NLP-based approaches, although accurate, are computationally intensive. We introduce a novel cascade SQLi detection method, blending classical and transformer-based NLP models, achieving a 99.86% detection accuracy with significantly lower computational demands-20 times faster than using transformer-based models alone. Our approach is tested in a realistic setting and compared with 35 other methods, including Machine Learning-based and transformer models like BERT, on a dataset of over 30,000 SQL sentences. Our results show that this hybrid method effectively detects SQLi in high-traffic environments, offering efficient and accurate protection against SQLi vulnerabilities with computational efficiency. The code is available at https://github.com/gdrlab/cascaded-sqli-detection .

The vibration properties of the composite structures is critical to the reliability and durability of the structures. Vibration becomes worst in case the delamination is present within laminates. In this research work, experimental, finite element and analytical techniques have been applied in order to analyze the influence of stacking sequence and delamination sizes on the natural frequencies of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite (CFRP) plate with and without delamination. The boundary conditions in this research work was (SSSS) (all sides simply supported. Experiments were performed to study the vibration characteristics of (CFRP) delaminated composite plate. Software package ABQUS was used to model and analyze the vibration response of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite plate for (SSSS) boundary condition and the effect of stacking sequence and delamination size was calculated. Rayleigh- Ritz Method was used to find the natural frequencies for different delamination sizes and stacking sequences. The results was concluded that natural frequencies were significantly affected by the delamination sizes and stacking sequences. Stacking sequence of (0/90/45/90) showed higher values of natural frequencies in lower mode subjected to all-sides simply supported boundary conditions. It was interesting to see that there were small differences in values of natural frequencies among the stacking sequences for lower modes but the difference gradually increased in case of higher modes.

Smart grid takes advantage of communication technologies for efficient energy management and utilization. It entails sacrifice from consumers in terms of reducing load during peak hours by using dynamic energy pricing model. To enable active participation of consumers in load management, the concept Home Energy Gateway (HEG) has recently been proposed in literature. However, the HEG concept is rather new and literature still lacks to address challenges related to data representation, seamless discovery, interoperability, security and privacy. This paper presents the design of a communication framework that effectively copes with the interoperability and integration challenges between devices from different manufacturers. The proposed communication framework offers seamless auto-discovery and zero-configuration based networking between heterogeneous devices at consumer sites. It uses elliptic curve based security mechanism for protecting consumers privacy and providing best possible shield against different types of cyberattacks. Experiments in real networking environment validated that the proposed communication framework is lightweight, secure, portable with low bandwidth requirement and flexible to be adopted for dynamic energy management in smart grid.

Recently, advancements in energy distribution models have fulfilled the needs of microgrids in finding a suitable energy distribution model between producer and consumer without the need of central controlling authority. Most of the energy distribution model deals with energy transactions and losses without considering the security aspects such as information tampering. The transaction data could be accessible online to keep track of the energy distribution between the consumer and producer (e.g., online payment records and supplier profiles). However this data is prone to modification and misuse if a consumer moves from one producer to other. Blockchain is considered to be one solution to allow users to exchange energy related data and keep track of it without exposing it to modification. In this paper, electrical transactions embedded in blockchain are validated using the signatures of multiple producers based on their assigned attributes. These signatures are verified and endorsed by the consumers satisfying those attributes without revealing any information. The public and private keys for these consumers are generated by the producers and endorsement procedure using these keys ensures that these consumers are authorized. This approach does not need any central authority. To resist against collision attacks, producers are given a secret pseudorandom function seed. The comparative analysis shows the efficiency of proposed approach over the existing ones.

Microgrids play an important role in today’s power systems as the distributed generation is becoming increasingly common. They can operate in two possible modes: (i) standalone and (ii) grid-connected. The transitional state from standalone to grid-connected mode is very critical and requires the microgrid to be synchronized with the main grid. Thus, secure, reliable and trustworthy control and communication is utmost necessary to prevent out-of-sync connection which could severely damage the microgrid and/or the main grid. Existing solutions consume more resources and take long time to establish a secure connection. The objective of the proposed work is to reduce the connection establishment time by using efficient computational algorithms and save the resources. This paper proposes a secure authentication and key establishment mechanism for ensuring safe operation and control of the microgrids. The proposed approach uses the concept of Elgamal with slight modification. Private key of the sender is used instead of a random number. The proposed modification ensures the non repudiation. This paper also presents a system threat model along with security network architecture and evaluates the performance of proposed algorithm in protecting microgrid communication against man in the middle attacks and replay attacks that could delay the packets to damage the system and need to be detected. Mathematical modeling and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the existing protocols in terms of connection establishment, resource consumption and security level.

The number of end-user network devices in the world is increasing at a rapid rate. Today, the most frequently used devices include smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop personal computers (PCs). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigated energy usage of PCs in the United States and revealed that they consume approximately 2% of overall generated electricity every year. Furthermore, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced in a study that about 60% people never switch off computers in offices (even when idle).

Synchrophasor technology has numerous applications ranging from simple grid monitoring/visualization to real-time protection and control. Most legacy phasor measurement units (PMUs) and phasor data concentrators (PDCs) deployed in power grids support the IEEE C37.118.2 communication framework, which is highly vulnerable to cyber attacks due to lack of inherent security mechanisms. The IEC 61850-90-5 recently emerged as new communication framework with support for security features but its use in commercial devices is still very limited. The replacement of legacy PMUs/PDCs in power grids is a big challenge due to cost and deployment complexity. The concept of a gateway has recently been proposed in the literature to enable IEEE C37.118.2 compatible PMUs to send data in IEC 61850-90-5 format. However, the published gateway has limited features and also lacks security functionalities. This paper addresses security, interoperability, and integration issues between legacy and state-of-the-art phasor devices through the design of a security gateway. The security gateway is implemented with flexibility in mind and can be used for PMUs as well as PDCs under different configurations. It provides: 1) protocol conversion functionalities (from IEEE C37.118.2 to IEC 61850-90-5 and vice versa) and 2) security functionalities based on IEC recommended group domain of interpretation security mechanism. The security gateway is very compact in size, based on low-power ARM processor and inexpensive to be deployed in power systems. Through detailed experimental evaluation with real PMU data, this paper also validated the suitability of the security gateway for different types of synchrophasor applications with strict latency and data rate requirements.