Ensign Alexander (Xander) Gore is studying Cyber Operations for an MS in Computer Science and the Cyber Fundamentals Certificate from the Naval Postgraduate School. He was born and raised in Portland, OR and graduated from San Diego State University with a BS in Computer Science, upon graduation he was commissioned into the United States Navy and designated a Student Naval Aviator.
The opportunity to learn about the cutting edge of a field that changes as fast as cyber operations from the people that are driving that change has been an invaluable experience to have so early in my career.
Detection and traceability is already a very difficult problem due to the small size, maneuverability, and autonomous abilities of modern drones. 5G is providing new capabilities that will give an adversary encrypted control of drones from anywhere in the world. Machine learning can help us leverage computers’ ability to sift through the massive amounts of traffic on 5G networks and identify unauthorized drones.
My research is establishing the framework on which a full detection system can be built to keep unauthorized and potentially dangerous drones out of sensitive and public spaces.
The methods for network traffic flow analysis that I’m researching have uses in network security broadly for detecting any kind of abnormal or malicious use of networks. I would love to see future students explore this research more deeply and potentially build an operational detection system.
My research has been a collaborative effort from the start between myself and my advisory team in the CS Department, the 5G Lab in the ECE Department, and the Unmanned Systems Lab in the MAE Department. This collaboration has given me an extensive range of resources to tackle real world problems, which don’t always fit into the box of a single department.
My education here at NPS has given me a deeper understanding of how cyberspace is an essential domain in our warfighting effort, and I hope to bring that into my operational duties in the future.
