Bio
Hi, I'm Rik Chatterjee, a Research Assistant at Colorado State University pursuing a PhD in Systems Engineeing. I work at the Energy Institute, specifically in the Systems Cyber Lab headed by Dr. Jeremy Daily. My current research is focused on embedded systems security, with an emphasis on applying formal methods, firmware reverse engineering, and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to real-world transportation and energy infrastructure. I aim to bridge the gap between high-level system modeling and low-level binary assurance, particularly in mission-critical cyber-physical systems. I have been involved in several funded research projects, including:
- The DARPA Assured Micropatching (AMP) program as a Technical Area (TA3) performer, where I developed challenge problems for hackathons, performed binary reversing, and evaluated performer solutions.
- The NSF PIVOT project, focused on infrastructure surrounding vehicualar system cybersecurity and intelligent transportation datasets.
- The NMFTA UTHP project, developing custom Linux distrubutions on the Yocto platform.
- The Cummins Truck-in-a-box project, engineering a software defined Hardware-in-the-loop platform for cybersecurity and software assurance testing.
- The DOT ELD Certification Study, engineering requirements, certification procedure and cybersecurity of Electronic Logging Devices, sponsored by the the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
- Currently, I'm working on the Byte RI project (STTR Phase II) in collaboration with NREL and AIS, focusing on applying solutions from AMP into embedded devices within the energy sector's electric grids.
Research Interests
- Finding software bugs (still learning!)
- Hardware reversing (still learning!)
- Commercial vehicle security (still learning!)
- Embedded systems (still learning!)
- Systems engineering (still learning!)
Current Projects
- PIVOT Project: NSF-funded research focused on vehicle data generation and disemmination to the community
- Byte RI Project: Collaboration with NREL and AIS for embedded solutions in electric grids
Publications
- Exploiting transport protocol vulnerabilities in SAE J1939 networks - Symposium of Vehicular Security and Privacy, 2023 [DOI]
- Exploiting diagnostic protocol vulnerabilities on embedded networks in commercial vehicles - Symposium of Vehicular Security and Privacy, 2024 [DOI]
- Commercial vehicle electronic logging device security: Unmasking the risk of truck-to-truck cyber worms - Symposium of Vehicular Security and Privacy, 2024 [DOI]
- Assured Micropatching of Race Conditions in Legacy Real-time Embedded Systems - Workshop on Real-Time Autonomous Systems Security, 2024 [DOI]
- A Demonstration of MBSEsec Applied to Securing Cyber-Physical System Communications - IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2024 [DOI]
- A Systems Approach for Designing Open Vehicle Data Archiving Systems - IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering, 2024 [DOI]
- TruckSentry: Context Aware Intrusion Detection and Prevention System for J1939 Networks - IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2025 [DOI]
- Short Paper: Software Bill of Materials Management for Embedded Vehicle Systems - International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles, 2025 [DOI]
Presentations
- DEFCON32: [Truck2Truck Worm]
- Symopisum of Vehicle Security and Privacy: [Diagnostic Protocol Vulnerabilities in Commercial Vehicles]
- NMFTA Cybersecuirty Conference: [Ultimate Truck Hacking Platform]
- Poster: NMFTA Cybersecurity Conference: [UDS Vulnerabilities]
- Symopisum of Vehicle Security and Privacy: [Transport Protocol Vulnerabilities in Commercial Vehicles]
- Workshop on Road to Future Automotive Datasets: [J1939 Data-Link Layer Vulnerabilities in Truck Networks]
- Poster: INCOSE Western States Regional Conference: [The Request Overload Attack]
Personal Projects
- ESP32 Weather Station: A personal project where I built a weather station using ESP32.