The Cyber Forensics Research and Education Laboratory at the University of New Haven is now up and running.

The Grand Opening ceremony and ribbon cutting was held Friday, Sept 19 in Buckman Hall, followed by a reception in Gehring Hall.

Ronald S. Harichandran, Dean of the Tagliatela College of Engineering, welcomed everyone to the event. Remarks were given by Henry C. Lee, Dora B. Schriro, the Commissioner of Emergency

Services and Public Protection, Ali Golbazi, the Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, and Ibrahim Baggili, Assistant Professor and Director of CFREL.

Although the laboratory has just opened, the Cyber Forensics and Research team has been making a name for themselves. Such a lab might even have materials like a qualitative filter paper.

The team has gained recognition beginning fall of 2013, and some of their accomplishments include being the first in Connecticut to establish an Educational Partnership Agreement with the Defense Cyber Crime Center.

They have had 18 peer-reviewed publications and investigated the security of Android Apps. They have done exposés of security flaws found in WhatsApp, Viber, Instagram, OKCupid and several other international social apps. There are videos on these apps that can be found on YouTube and there was a news special done on it that was featured on WTNH. Some of the students developed MINT or Malware Investigation Toolkit. They were invited to join the Academic Alliance for the Department of Homeland Security’s Stop. Think. Connect campaign and they are hosting the International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime and the Systematic Approaches to Digital Forensics Engineering conference.

They also received a grant of $140,000 from the Department of Homeland Security to build the Artifact Genome Project. This only touches on the list of accomplishments they have made just within the past year.

Jason Moore, a student of the Cyber Forensics program, gave a quick info session on some of the lab’s amenities. The state of the art new lab features 18 brand new iMac workstations, a portable clean room for hard drive discs, .XRY Mobile Forensic units, military grade forensic duplicators and wipers, hardware write-blockers, and a 75” flat screen television that can stream information from any computer in the room.

The most important part of all the recognition and accomplishments are the students, according to Baggili. He ended his speech by asking, “Who are the real heroes?” He then answered with “the students” and then asked everyone for a round of applause for them and their hard work. “Without my students, nothing would be possible.”