• NAI Report

  In 2002, McAfee Reseach was funded by DARPA to prepare a report, "Justification and Requirements for a National DDoS Defense Technology Evaluation Facility,", that described the objectives and requirements for a large scale DDoS testbed.

• The DETER Project

  The DETER objectives were to:

  • Design, build, and operate a network testbed specifically to support security research, DETERlab;
  • Catalog software tools to help create, monitor, and analyze complex security experiments in DETERlab;
  • Facilitate the creation of a collaborative community of security researchers, in particular the EMIST project (see below.)
  The DETER project was funded jointly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 0335298 and by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), over the period 2003-2007. The partners in the DETER project were USC's Information Sciences Institute (USC-ISI), UC Berkeley, and Sparta.

• The EMIST Project

  The EMIST (Evaluation Methods for Internet Security Technology) project funded an initial set of DETERlab users, with a research focus on developing scientifically rigorous testing frameworks and methodologies for representative classes of network attacks and defense mechanisms. The EMIST members also collected datasets and developed user tools to aid further security research in DETERlab.

  EMIST was funded by NSF as a parallel and collaborative research effort to the DETER project. Academic and industry partners in the EMIST effort included Penn State, McAfee Research, ICSI, Purdue, SPARTA Inc., SRI International, and UC Davis. EMIST research areas included DDoS defense, worm propagation, and BGP routing attacks, and the research directions and efforts in each area were often collaborative.

• The DIPLOMAT Project

  Much of the research begun under EMIST has continued under other funding vehicles, and the user community broadened. The DHS responded favorably to a proposal from ISI, UCB, and Sparta to continue to develop and operate the DETERlab testbed as a national (and international) resource for cyber security experimentation and testing. The result was the DIPLOMAT project, covering roughly 2007-2010.

  The initial DETERlab usage by the EMIST project members was centered on high-quality academic research. That is still the focus of many DETERlab users. However, the industry users are shifting the emphasis towards safe and repeatable validation of defense devices with realistic attack traffic.

• Hardware Refresh Funding

  In addition to DHS funding for operation and development of DETERlab, the NSF and the DoD have provided additional equipment funding through the DECCOR and DIRECT projects.
   

Summary of DETERlab Funding

DETER Project: EIN: Collaborative Reserach Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network
Period of Performance: 09/01/03 - 02/28/07
Award Number: CNS-0335298

DECCOR Project: Deter Cyber Community of Researchers
Period of Performance: 07/15/05 - 06/30/07
Award Number: CNS-0454381

DIPLOMAT Project: Deter Integrated Plan for Operations and Maintenance Transition
Period of Performance: 12/07/06 - 03/06/10
Award Number: N66001-07-C-2001

DIRECT Project: DETER Infrastructure Refresh and Experiment Components Transformation
Period of Performance: 06/15/07 - 06/14/08
Award Number: SA5727-11698