Mapping the Effectiveness of Automated Software Testing. This project aims to help software engineers build complex software systems in far more reliable and cost-effective ways. It takes an interdisciplinary approach by applying machine learning techniques to automatically test complex software systems. Expected outcomes include a novel methodology for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of test suites generated by automated software testing techniques and the approaches required for generat ....Mapping the Effectiveness of Automated Software Testing. This project aims to help software engineers build complex software systems in far more reliable and cost-effective ways. It takes an interdisciplinary approach by applying machine learning techniques to automatically test complex software systems. Expected outcomes include a novel methodology for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of test suites generated by automated software testing techniques and the approaches required for generating high-quality test cases. Such advances are urgently needed to avoid disasters when deploying software systems in the real world.Read moreRead less
Values-oriented Defect Fixing for Mobile Software Applications. This project aims to address critical problems with mobile applications that exhibit human values-based defects, by advancing our understanding, detection and fixing of such defects. Many mobile apps do not operate according to the essential values of their human users - e.g. inclusivity, accessibility, privacy, ethical behaviour, due care, emotions, etc - making them ineffective, underused, unfit for purpose or even dangerous. Exp ....Values-oriented Defect Fixing for Mobile Software Applications. This project aims to address critical problems with mobile applications that exhibit human values-based defects, by advancing our understanding, detection and fixing of such defects. Many mobile apps do not operate according to the essential values of their human users - e.g. inclusivity, accessibility, privacy, ethical behaviour, due care, emotions, etc - making them ineffective, underused, unfit for purpose or even dangerous. Expected outcomes include new theories, techniques and prototype tools for developers and end users to detect and help fix values-based defects in mobile apps. Benefits include better, safer mobile apps for people and organisations and improved app developer productivity and competitiveness.Read moreRead less
MemberGuard: Protecting Machine Learning Privacy from Membership Inference. Machine Learning has become a core part of many real-world applications. However, machine learning models are vulnerable to membership inference attacks. In these attacks, an adversary can infer if a given data record has been part of the model's training data. In this project, the team aims to develop new techniques that can be used to counter these attacks, such as 1) new analytical models for membership leakage, 2) ne ....MemberGuard: Protecting Machine Learning Privacy from Membership Inference. Machine Learning has become a core part of many real-world applications. However, machine learning models are vulnerable to membership inference attacks. In these attacks, an adversary can infer if a given data record has been part of the model's training data. In this project, the team aims to develop new techniques that can be used to counter these attacks, such as 1) new analytical models for membership leakage, 2) new methods for susceptibility diagnosis, 3) new defences that leverage privacy and utility. Data-oriented services are estimated to be valuable assets in the future. These techniques can help Australia gain cutting edge advantage in machine learning security and privacy and protect its intellectual property on these services.Read moreRead less
Scalable & Accountable Privacy-Preserving Blockchain with Enhanced Security. This project aims to address the scalability and accountability of privacy-preserving blockchain by advancing cryptographic techniques. This project expects to develop scalable protocols for privacy-preserving blockchain while also adding accountability for authority to trace cyber crime activities, which is a missing piece in any state-of-the-art public blockchain system. Expected outcomes of this project include not o ....Scalable & Accountable Privacy-Preserving Blockchain with Enhanced Security. This project aims to address the scalability and accountability of privacy-preserving blockchain by advancing cryptographic techniques. This project expects to develop scalable protocols for privacy-preserving blockchain while also adding accountability for authority to trace cyber crime activities, which is a missing piece in any state-of-the-art public blockchain system. Expected outcomes of this project include not only practical solutions for protecting sensitive data recorded in blockchain but also crucial techniques to make the blockchain accountable for practical applications with enhanced security. This project provides significant benefits, such as building a trusted environment for sensitive transactions in the digital economy.Read moreRead less
A data driven paradigm for service-oriented system engineering. This project aims to design and develop a data driven paradigm for service-oriented system engineering that allows system engineers and domain experts in different domains to build software systems easily in order to enable fast technology transfer within and across domain boundaries. This model integrates and automates a suite of efficient approaches for system structure determination, validation and recommendation based on keyword ....A data driven paradigm for service-oriented system engineering. This project aims to design and develop a data driven paradigm for service-oriented system engineering that allows system engineers and domain experts in different domains to build software systems easily in order to enable fast technology transfer within and across domain boundaries. This model integrates and automates a suite of efficient approaches for system structure determination, validation and recommendation based on keyword search, subgraph isomorphism and substructure query techniques. This project is expected to significantly accelerate the application of new technologies, for example, big data analytics and Internet of Things, in many of Australia's critical domains such as e-Health, smart cities, and cybersecurity.Read moreRead less
Preventing sensitive data exfiltration from insiders . Confidential data such as military secrets or intellectual property must never be disclosed outside the organisation; formally protecting data exfiltration from insider attacks is a major challenge. This project aims to develop a pattern matching based systematic methodology for data exfiltration in database systems. We will devise highly accurate detection tools and secure provenance techniques that can effectively protect against insider a ....Preventing sensitive data exfiltration from insiders . Confidential data such as military secrets or intellectual property must never be disclosed outside the organisation; formally protecting data exfiltration from insider attacks is a major challenge. This project aims to develop a pattern matching based systematic methodology for data exfiltration in database systems. We will devise highly accurate detection tools and secure provenance techniques that can effectively protect against insider attacks. The outcomes of the project will incorporate new security constraints and policies raised by emerging technologies to enable better protection of sensitive information. Read moreRead less
Intelligent Incident Management for Software-Intensive Systems. This project aims to develop intelligent incident management methods for software-intensive systems. Incidents are unplanned system interruptions or outages that could affect the normal operations of an organization and cause huge economic loss. This project expects to develop innovative, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based methods for automated incident management, including incident detection, incident identification, and incident ....Intelligent Incident Management for Software-Intensive Systems. This project aims to develop intelligent incident management methods for software-intensive systems. Incidents are unplanned system interruptions or outages that could affect the normal operations of an organization and cause huge economic loss. This project expects to develop innovative, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based methods for automated incident management, including incident detection, incident identification, and incident triage. Expected outcomes of the project include a set of novel methods and tools that can facilitate incident diagnosis and resolution. This project will provide significant benefits, such as improving the availability of software-intensive systems and reducing the economic loss caused by the incidents. Read moreRead less
Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an ....Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an open-source tool that can capture precision correlations between deep code features and diverse vulnerabilities to pinpoint emerging vulnerabilities without the need for bug specifications. Significant benefits include greatly improved quality, reliability and security for modern software systems.Read moreRead less
Privacy-preserving data processing on the cloud. This project aims to address the current lack of privacy of user data processed by common cloud computing web servers, including email, business data, and confidential files. This project aims to develop new techniques in cryptography. The anticipated outcome is a suite of practical tools enabling common cloud computing processing operations such as search, statistical analysis, and multi-user access control, to be performed efficiently while pres ....Privacy-preserving data processing on the cloud. This project aims to address the current lack of privacy of user data processed by common cloud computing web servers, including email, business data, and confidential files. This project aims to develop new techniques in cryptography. The anticipated outcome is a suite of practical tools enabling common cloud computing processing operations such as search, statistical analysis, and multi-user access control, to be performed efficiently while preserving the data privacy. These tools should provide significant benefits to the privacy of cloud users, as well as financial and reputation benefits to the IT industry, by significantly reducing the likelihood of massive user data privacy breaches in the event of a cyber-hacking attack on the cloud server.Read moreRead less
Encrypted, Distributed, and Queryable Data Store: Framework and Realisation. This project aims to design an encrypted, distributed, and queryable data store. Distributed data stores are used for a broad spectrum of applications. While creating unprecedented opportunities, long-standing data security and privacy concerns are yet to be tackled. This project expects to propose a new architecture for encrypted data stores, and devise practical query processing functions over encrypted and distribute ....Encrypted, Distributed, and Queryable Data Store: Framework and Realisation. This project aims to design an encrypted, distributed, and queryable data store. Distributed data stores are used for a broad spectrum of applications. While creating unprecedented opportunities, long-standing data security and privacy concerns are yet to be tackled. This project expects to propose a new architecture for encrypted data stores, and devise practical query processing functions over encrypted and distributed data records. The intended outcome should bring users confidence for the secure adoption of cloud data storage services and significantly benefit enterprises that demand guaranteed protection on their proprietary data.Read moreRead less