Federal Grant Award Summary

The Pennsylvania State University received a $600,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070) for the period August 1, 2026 through July 31, 2029. This project, titled "CICI: RSSD: Security-Centric and Verifiable Control Plane Cellular Traffic Collection," develops privacy-preserving datasets and methodologies to capture real-world control-plane behavior in cellular networks. The project addresses critical security gaps in fifth-generation (5G) and future wireless systems by creating trustworthy, verifiable data that researchers can use to study threats to control-plane signaling systems—which handle connection setup, authentication, key exchange, and mobility functions.

Penn State will deliver new technical frameworks and datasets supporting cellular network security research, including an in-device observability framework for capturing security-relevant events, a hybrid replay environment for large-scale control-plane data collection across open radio access networks (Open RAN) and core networks, and privacy-preserving data transformation techniques. The resulting representative datasets will enable the development and evaluation of critical security solutions such as intrusion detection systems, forensic analysis tools, and benchmarking platforms. These products are designed to strengthen the resilience of next-generation wireless networks while supporting public safety and national security objectives.