Uncovering the organisational dynamics of pirates and maritime terrorists. This project will develop a novel framework to assess the organisational dynamics of two major maritime threats: piracy syndicates and maritime-capable terrorist groups. The results will allow analysts and policymakers to understand the behaviour of violent maritime organisations, and to maximise the effectiveness of policies designed to stop them.
Stochastic Assessment of Terrorist Blast and Fragmentation Casualty Risks. The project will develop probabilistic models to predict the likelihood and extent of casualties and other losses from terrorist car bombing threats. Car bombs comprise a large quantity of explosives, and produce primary fragments such as wheels, engine block, parts of door panels and other shrapnel that pose a serious safety hazard to people exposed in a street or other mass gatherings. An improved understanding of safet ....Stochastic Assessment of Terrorist Blast and Fragmentation Casualty Risks. The project will develop probabilistic models to predict the likelihood and extent of casualties and other losses from terrorist car bombing threats. Car bombs comprise a large quantity of explosives, and produce primary fragments such as wheels, engine block, parts of door panels and other shrapnel that pose a serious safety hazard to people exposed in a street or other mass gatherings. An improved understanding of safety risks will assist in setting safe evacuation distances. A quantitative assessment of terrorism risks will also allow the effectiveness of security measures to be assessed to provide cost-effective levels of protection that are acceptable to society.Read moreRead less
Foundations for Physically Unclonable nano-Security on Silicon. This project aims to develop an on-chip physical unclonable function (PUF) based on recent progress in nanotechnology to generate unprecedented number of unique signatures. This is significant because these signatures can be used for preventing fraud and counterfeiting, protecting sensitive data and securing communications. PUFs will play an extremely vital role in future security systems. The PUF in the proposed project will be sim ....Foundations for Physically Unclonable nano-Security on Silicon. This project aims to develop an on-chip physical unclonable function (PUF) based on recent progress in nanotechnology to generate unprecedented number of unique signatures. This is significant because these signatures can be used for preventing fraud and counterfeiting, protecting sensitive data and securing communications. PUFs will play an extremely vital role in future security systems. The PUF in the proposed project will be simple, fast, tiny, energy efficient and highly secure as a result of the abundant nano-fabrication variations. The outcome of this project will be a prototype of a super high secure nanoelectronic-based PUF that will be tested to evaluate the technology and its security against malicious attacks.Read moreRead less
Expectations and commitments in the Australia-USA alliance. This project aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. The project intends to use a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time. Expected outcomes can advance understanding of how alliances operate as security institutions. The outcomes can help to prom ....Expectations and commitments in the Australia-USA alliance. This project aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. The project intends to use a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time. Expected outcomes can advance understanding of how alliances operate as security institutions. The outcomes can help to promote a more informed national conversation about the costs and benefits of Australia's security relationship with the United States of America (USA) and contribute to debates over the future of the Australia-USA Alliance during a period of strategic uncertainty.Read moreRead less
Energy big data analytics from a cybersecurity perspective. This project aims to develop a framework on energy big data analytics from security and privacy perspectives. Unlike other big data analytics such as social network big data analytics, energy big data analytics involve research challenges on how to cope with real-time tight cyber-physical couplings, and security/safety of the smart grid system. This project will develop advanced data-driven algorithms that are capable of detecting coord ....Energy big data analytics from a cybersecurity perspective. This project aims to develop a framework on energy big data analytics from security and privacy perspectives. Unlike other big data analytics such as social network big data analytics, energy big data analytics involve research challenges on how to cope with real-time tight cyber-physical couplings, and security/safety of the smart grid system. This project will develop advanced data-driven algorithms that are capable of detecting coordinated cyber-attacks that will potentially lead to catastrophic cascaded failures; and develop new solutions in detecting the false data-injection attacks that are conventionally considered as unobservable. This project will provide the benefit of enhancing our national critical infrastructure's security.Read moreRead less
Privacy-preserving Biometrics based Authentication and Security. Password based authentication systems cannot verify genuine users. Biometric authentication can address this issue. However, the booming IoT applications and cloud computing require that the biometric authentication must be conducted in the privacy-protected setting in order to comply with privacy protection legal regulations. Latest reports show that current biometric authentication systems, under protected setting, exhibit poor ....Privacy-preserving Biometrics based Authentication and Security. Password based authentication systems cannot verify genuine users. Biometric authentication can address this issue. However, the booming IoT applications and cloud computing require that the biometric authentication must be conducted in the privacy-protected setting in order to comply with privacy protection legal regulations. Latest reports show that current biometric authentication systems, under protected setting, exhibit poor authentication performance, which is not commercially applicable. This project aims to investigate innovative solutions to this issue. The intended deliverables will include deep learning based biometric feature extractor, cancellable biometrics and cloud oriented biometrics security protocols. Read moreRead less
The World's Most Enterprising Country: North Korea's Survival in the Global Economy. This project explores the seeming paradox at the heart of North Korea: The most politically isolated state in the world sustains itself economically in large part by international trade and integration into the global economy. Adopting a framework from the economic geography literature, the project will use archival and field research to address how the North Korean state and its citizens use trade networks in E ....The World's Most Enterprising Country: North Korea's Survival in the Global Economy. This project explores the seeming paradox at the heart of North Korea: The most politically isolated state in the world sustains itself economically in large part by international trade and integration into the global economy. Adopting a framework from the economic geography literature, the project will use archival and field research to address how the North Korean state and its citizens use trade networks in East Asia and beyond to ensure their economic survival in the face of a hostile political environment. This will allow analysts to assess the implications of North Korea's economic integration for the country's development, as well as the effect that North Korea’s unique integration into the global economy has on regional and global stability.Read moreRead less
The Mineral factor: strategic minerals, imperial resources and global politics (1895-1995). With the emergence of Asia, the political control of 'rare earths' vital to high-tech industries has prompted international diplomatic and commercial concern. This project explores the history of 'strategic minerals' and assesses the role of minerals policy in achieving both 'mineral security' and environmental sustainability.
Symbolic synthesis of knowledge-based program implementations. Systems with concurrent streams of activity are ubiquitous in computer hardware and software designs, but are conceptually complex, and fraught with faults and inefficiency. The project aims to address these difficulties by automating aspects of system design, to relieve the designer of the need to reason about complex patterns of information flow.
Towards a block-cipher circuit resistant to multiple side channel attacks. This project aims to design, implement and verify the first ever fully comprehensive countermeasure against simultaneous attacks on devices performing a cryptographic task, such as a smart card or a mobile phone used for an electronic payment, through a variety of side channels. Side channel attacks aim to obtain unauthorized access to secret cryptographic keys used by such devices, by collecting and statistically process ....Towards a block-cipher circuit resistant to multiple side channel attacks. This project aims to design, implement and verify the first ever fully comprehensive countermeasure against simultaneous attacks on devices performing a cryptographic task, such as a smart card or a mobile phone used for an electronic payment, through a variety of side channels. Side channel attacks aim to obtain unauthorized access to secret cryptographic keys used by such devices, by collecting and statistically processing measurements of by-products of the physical operation of these devices, such as the consumed power or electromagnetic radiation. Rapid proliferation of personal devices used for electronic payments or containing sensitive data makes such a comprehensive countermeasure urgently needed.Read moreRead less