CyberFarm

The Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture (CAIA) and The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Node (CCI-SW) invite you to express interest in the Commonwealth’s first agriculture cybersecurity challenge: CyberFarm.

Join other students and researchers in competing for $10,000 to perform the project with a $5,000 prize for the winning team!

Submission Guidelines:

Researchers interested in submitting full proposals must submit an expression of interest, using this form. Expressions of interest can be for an individual or a team, and expressions of interest from all Virginia institutions are allowed.  If you are submitting as an individual, the CyberFarm team will compare your interests and expertise to others and suggest partnerships. If you submit as a team, the team must have at least 1 Virginia Tech member (a VT faculty, postdoc, or graduate/undergraduate student). Virginia Tech affiliation will be required for submitting and receiving funding. Each final team should at least have 2 and at most 6 members.

After the matching period, each team will submit a full proposal to develop an agricultural system Cyber framework, such as for controlled-environment agriculture (CEA), seafood, water systems, dairy farms, or any other agricultural infrastructure. Submissions should include a Cyber framework for any stage (attack mitigation, attack detection, pre-attack, post-attack) of cyber readiness or resilience for an agriculture-related system. The framework has to be domain specific and could deal with one or more forms of attacks, such as denial or service, data poisoning, brute force, and others.

All interested teams will be invited to attend a Webinar and Q&A to discuss the CyberFarm process and answer any questions.

A Two-Phase Approach:

In phase 1, the teams submit a 4-page proposal on what they aim to develop. The proposal should consist of a framework description using the 4 points mentioned below (ag system, attack, data, code). Two teams will be selected and funded for phase 2. Each of the two selected teams will receive $10,000 to:

1. Develop the project – funds will be provided for both teams and could be used for travel and faculty % time, or any other allowed expenses, the funds will be transferred to the Virginia Tech team member's department.
2. Teams can elect (encouraged but not required) to work with the VT Agricultural Research and Extension Center (AREC) networks for different agricultural systems. Information on the ARECs can be found here: https://www.arec.vaes.vt.edu/arec.html
3. The two selected teams will present their frameworks to the committee.

A framework consists of the following:

• One form of agricultural system.
• One (or more) kind of Cyber-attack on the agricultural system. The MITRE ATT&CK framework has a comprehensive list of different Cyber-attack forms: https://attack.mitre.org/
• A dataset, representing operations at the farm, or other relevant agriculture dataset.
• Code, representing the cyber-attack instance, and the defense mechanism.  

Example Cyber frameworks are as follows:

• https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9646172
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214714423000855 
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42678-x
• https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/10/11/1257
• https://arxiv.org/html/2403.08036v1

Three example datasets can be provided to submitters, or using an agriculture-related dataset of your choice is also equally viable. The following datasets are provided, and if you choose to use one, please contact the competition’s committee for access:

• ACWA Lab Data:
  • The AI & Cyber for Water & Ag (ACWA) lab dataset represents multiple water sensors, computational nodes, pumps, pipes, tanks, valves, smart water devices, and  soil beds.Variables include water flow, pressure, nitrogen levels, pH, and other parameters. (Contact: Feras Batarseh, bataresh@vt.edu)
• Seafood AREC Data:
  • The dataset is a hyperspectral imaging data of fish fillets, with wavelength from 900 nm - 1700 nm, and 640 vertical pixel resolution. Each pixel is coming with a spectrum of 344 data points. For each image data, there is a ground truth of Vitamin D content. (Contact: Yiming Feng, yimingfeng@vt.edu)
• Control Environment Agriculture (CEA) Data: 
  • The environmental data collected by the Watchdog weather station includes temperature, humidity, and light data. The Watchdog collects data every 30 min on each parameter. The units of each measurement are in the data sheet. Our greenhouse is not controlled by this sensor, but it is controlled by a sensor that collects similar data. (Contact: Kaylee South, kasouth@vt.edu)

Phase-1 Proposal Format:

The following sections are needed in your phase-1 proposal (up to 4 pages).

• Title page (one page): Title of the proposed project, name, affiliation, and contact information for the Principal Investigator (PI) and co-Principal Investigators (co-PIs), if any.
• Proposed Project/Framework (up to two pages): Project/framework description and development plan (methods, likely outcomes, milestones,).
• Budget breakdown and timeline (one page). 

Timeline:

• Deadline to express interest in competing: November 15, 2024
• Webinar and Q&A for participants: 4th week of November, 2025
• Deadline to submit Phase-1 Proposal: January 31, 2025
• Phase-1 winners announced: February 15, 2025
• Deadline to complete Phase-2 project: June 15, 2025
• Phase-2 project presentations and final winner announcement: End of June, 2025

CyberFarm Committee:

The CyberFarm Committee will select the 2 winners of Phase-1 and the final winner of Phase-2. The committee consists of VT Cyberbiosecurity researchers, CAIA personnel, and VT-ARC collaborators.

The committee members are:

• Feras Batarseh, Associate Professor, Biological Systems Engineering, VT
• Matt Wolfe, Vice President of Technology, VT Applied Research Corporation
• Zeb Bowden, Division Director, Technology, Development, and Deployment, VT Transportation Institute
• Yiming Feng, Assistant Professor, Biological Systems Engineering, VT
• Kaylee South, Assistant Professor, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, VT
• Kang Xia, Director, CAIA, VT
• Will Singer, Program Manager, CAIA, VT

Please direct any questions to batarseh@vt.edu OR wilmsing@vt.edu

*The CyberFarm logo was made in collaboration by Jeremy Zeigler, VT-ARC and Steph Buckley, VT CALS