Cloud Active Defense Strategies Simulation and Evaluation F/M

WHAT WE OFFER Our company culture is focused on helping our employees enable innovation by building breakthroughs together. How? We focus every day on building the foundation for tomorrow and creating a workplace that embraces differences, values flexibility, and is aligned to our purpose-driven and future-focused work. We offer a highly collaborative, caring team environment with a strong focus on learning and development, recognition for your individual contributions, and a variety of benefit options for you to choose from. Apply now! ABOUT US (TEAM) Maintaining security is a constantly shifting task, and we need to respond with continuous learning and research. The portfolio of SAP Security Research contains those topics that we believe are most important for SAP’s security future. SAP’s vision to secure business is built on 3 ideals: Zero-Vulnerability, to harden the software by eliminating vulnerabilities, Defensible Application, to enable the software to identify and prevent attacks, and Zero-Knowledge, to make any theft of data useless through encryption. Considering these aspects, SAP Security Research covers the following focal areas: Anonymization for Big Data, Secure Internet of Things, Software security analysis, Open-source analysis, Deceptive application, Applied cryptography, Quantum technology, and Machine Learning as enabler for the next generation of security. PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES This internship is based in the SAP Labs France Research Lab, in Sophia-Antipolis. The work will be performed in the context of the Research Program “Security research”, under the “Active Defense” topic. This topic aims at deceiving, confusing and misdirecting adversaries, to undermine their exploitation capabilities. While previous ‘‘Capture The Flag“ or “Red Teaming“ experiments show that deception is effective in attack detection, it remains difficult to come up with an experimentation framework that will allow to do rigorous and repeatable tests to find the optimal deception parameters. For this, a recent approach has been to utilize the CyberBattleSIm framework developed by Microsoft based on the OpenAI gym interface [1]. This project allows to simulate an enterprise network environment and provides abstraction of various network and security concepts. Researchers proposed to modify CyberBattleSIm, to add the abstractions of deception concepts and experiment with the number and location of deceptive elements [2]. However, CyberBattleSim mainly simulates a network environment where the ‘nodes are computing elements and the edges are connections between nodes“. Thus, it mainly allows to experiment with network-layer deception. The goal of this internship is first to assess the applicability, and second, to adapt CyberBattleSim to cloud infrastructure and application-layer deception. Ideally, this would allow us to simulate the possible attack vectors that are identified during an application threat modeling exercise, and to measure the effectiveness of deception on such attacks. EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS Some of the tasks to be addressed include: * Getting familiar with state-of-the-art research on deception * Getting familiar with the OpenAI gym and CyberBattleSim frameworks * Understanding the abstractions provided by CyberBattleSim * Getting familiar with the cloud architecture and cloud application environment at SAP, e.g SAP’s Business Technology Platform * Finding ways to abstract and simulate web/cloud application components in CyberBattleSim * Finding ways to abstract and simulate application layer deceptive elements in CyberBattleSim * Implementing a prototype with these abstractions that would allow to experiment with the location, enticingness, and number of deceptive elements. Note that, as this is mainly a research project, the tasks and expectations can be updated during the course of the internship, depending on the research process and findings. We expect that 60% of time of the intern will be dedicated to research and 40% to development activities. [1] Microsoft Defender Research Team. CyberBattleSim. https://github.com/microsoft/cyberbattlesim, 2021. [2] Walter, E., Ferguson-Walter, K., Ridley, A. Incorporating Deception into CyberBattleSim for Autonomous Defense. IJCAI-21 1st International Workshop on Adaptive Cyber Defense, 2021. PROFILE/EDUCATION/SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES * University Level: Last year of MSc in Computer Science or beyond * Good knowledge of Machine Learning techniques (in particular, Reinforcement Learning) * Good knowledge of Python * Familiarity with OpenAI gym is a plus * Familiarity with web application and/or cloud security is a plus * Previous projects that rely on simulation and abstraction are a plus * Familiarity with academic research is a plus * Fluency in English (working language) * Abilities in organizing meetings and contacting people * Good oral and written communication skills * Capacity to write documents in English, ability to synthesize PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE * None required We are SAP SAP innovations help more than 400,000 customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. Originally known for leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SAP has evolved to become a market leader in end-to-end business application software and related services for database, analytics, intelligent technologies, and experience management. As a cloud company with 200 million users and more than 100,000 employees worldwide, we are purpose-driven and future-focused, with a highly collaborative team ethic and commitment to personal development. Whether connecting global industries, people, or platforms, we help ensure every challenge gets the solution it deserves. At SAP, we build breakthroughs, together. Our inclusion promise SAP’s culture of inclusion, focus on health and well-being, and flexible working models help ensure that everyone – regardless of background – feels included and can run at their best. At SAP, we believe we are made stronger by the unique capabilities and qualities that each person brings to our company, and we invest in our employees to inspire confidence and help everyone realize their full potential. We ultimately believe in unleashing all talent and creating a better and more equitable world. SAP is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to the values of Equal Employment Opportunity and provide accessibility accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities. If you are interested in applying for employment with SAP and are in need of accommodation or special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please send an e-mail with your request to Recruiting Operations Team: Americas: Careers.NorthAmerica@sap.com or Careers.LatinAmerica@sap.com, APJ: Careers.APJ@sap.com, EMEA: Careers@sap.com. EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability: Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, et al), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability. Successful candidates might be required to undergo a background verification with an external vendor. Requisition ID:320265 | Work Area: Software-Design and Development | Expected Travel: 0 - 10% | Career Status: Student | Employment Type: Intern |