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
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
Defending AI based FinTech Systems against Model Extraction Attacks. This project aims to develop new methods for defending artificial intelligence (AI) based FinTech systems from highly potent and insidious model extraction attacks whereby an adversary can steal the AI model from the system to cause intellectual property (IP) violation, business advantage disruption, and financial loss. This can be achieved by examining various attack models, creating active and utility-preserving defences, and ....Defending AI based FinTech Systems against Model Extraction Attacks. This project aims to develop new methods for defending artificial intelligence (AI) based FinTech systems from highly potent and insidious model extraction attacks whereby an adversary can steal the AI model from the system to cause intellectual property (IP) violation, business advantage disruption, and financial loss. This can be achieved by examining various attack models, creating active and utility-preserving defences, and inventing non-removable watermarks on AI models. The outcomes are new tools for securing AI-based FinTech systems before deployment and tools for IP violation forensics post-deployment. Such capabilities are beneficial by improving the security and safety of FinTech systems and other nationally critical AI systems.Read moreRead less
Privacy preserving and data utility in outsourced systems. Making the best tradeoff between data privacy and utility is a vital challenge in privacy-preserving outsourcing environments. This project aims to develop a balanced distributed framework to achieve the best utility of outsourced data while protecting private information. The framework consists of general structure of distributed evolutionary algorithms and a predefined topology for high optimization efficiency and a dynamic groupin ....Privacy preserving and data utility in outsourced systems. Making the best tradeoff between data privacy and utility is a vital challenge in privacy-preserving outsourcing environments. This project aims to develop a balanced distributed framework to achieve the best utility of outsourced data while protecting private information. The framework consists of general structure of distributed evolutionary algorithms and a predefined topology for high optimization efficiency and a dynamic grouping recombination model. The project outcomes will be beneficial to applications in the nation as it incorporates new privacy constraints and utility requirements raised by emerging technologies to enable better protection of sensitive information and maximal data utility in outsourced systems. Read moreRead less
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL190100035
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,009,457.00
Summary
Human-centric Model-driven Software Engineering. This project aims to find fundamentally new ways to capture and use human-centric software requirements during model-driven software engineering and verifying that systems meet these requirements. There are major issues with misaligned software applications in terms of accessibility, usability, emotions, personality, age, gender, and culture. This project aims to address these through new conceptual foundations and modelling techniques for their s ....Human-centric Model-driven Software Engineering. This project aims to find fundamentally new ways to capture and use human-centric software requirements during model-driven software engineering and verifying that systems meet these requirements. There are major issues with misaligned software applications in terms of accessibility, usability, emotions, personality, age, gender, and culture. This project aims to address these through new conceptual foundations and modelling techniques for their support during software engineering. The intended outcomes are enhanced theory, models, tools and capability for next-generation software engineering with these critical elements. Significant benefits are expected to include greatly improved software quality, developer productivity and cost savings.Read moreRead less
Developing A Smart Farming Oriented Secure Data Infrastructure. Smart farming is the future of agriculture. However, recently the Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a
warning that the lack of data privacy and cyber security mechanisms in the field runs a high risk of disaster. This
project aims to establish an innovative secure data infrastructure for smart farming including secure and automated smart farming supply-chain management. The deliverables of this project will include the cutt ....Developing A Smart Farming Oriented Secure Data Infrastructure. Smart farming is the future of agriculture. However, recently the Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a
warning that the lack of data privacy and cyber security mechanisms in the field runs a high risk of disaster. This
project aims to establish an innovative secure data infrastructure for smart farming including secure and automated smart farming supply-chain management. The deliverables of this project will include the cutting-edge Blockchain based secure IoT data management and privacy-preserving smart contracts for smart farming supply-chain management. This data infrastructure will be the first of its kind which will lay a solid foundation for smart farming technology.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
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220101057
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$424,140.00
Summary
Practical Automated Software Bug Fixing via Syntactic and Semantic Analyses. This proposal aims to advance the practical adoption of automated software bug repair, which has recently been adopted by industry, e.g., Facebook. It will produce novel methods that use mining software repositories, program analysis, and human-guided search to help automated repair to scale and be accurate. Expected outcomes include a publicly available automated bug repair framework. This project will help the softwar ....Practical Automated Software Bug Fixing via Syntactic and Semantic Analyses. This proposal aims to advance the practical adoption of automated software bug repair, which has recently been adopted by industry, e.g., Facebook. It will produce novel methods that use mining software repositories, program analysis, and human-guided search to help automated repair to scale and be accurate. Expected outcomes include a publicly available automated bug repair framework. This project will help the software industry deliver to users high quality software with improved reliability and safety, and increase education quality for students learning to code via automated feedback generation.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101577
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$427,116.00
Summary
Microarchitectural attacks and JavaScript: threats and defences. This project aims to improve cybersecurity by identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities in Internet-connected computers. Expected outcomes of this project include novel techniques for protecting web browsers and cloud server, to prevent them from inadvertent leaks of private or sensitive information. This should provide significant benefits, such as reduced risk of cyberattacks and improved privacy for web users.
Privacy-Preserving Fog Info System in Infrastructure-Deficient Environments. Due to Australia’s unique geographical distribution and population density, many regional or remote areas lack infrastructural support and development, including telecommunications and electricity supply. It is important to provide information and communication services in such infrastructure-deficient environments. In this project, we will develop a first-ever commercially ready Fog information system, or FogIS in shor ....Privacy-Preserving Fog Info System in Infrastructure-Deficient Environments. Due to Australia’s unique geographical distribution and population density, many regional or remote areas lack infrastructural support and development, including telecommunications and electricity supply. It is important to provide information and communication services in such infrastructure-deficient environments. In this project, we will develop a first-ever commercially ready Fog information system, or FogIS in short, to enable localised information and communication services, while preserving users' privacy, in infrastructure-deficient environments. The deployment of this system will bring great benefits to Australia’s economic growth, the quality of life, cybersecurity, and environment control in rural and regional Australia. Read moreRead less