Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210100019
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$408,000.00
Summary
A Scalable and Adaptive-Resilient Blockchain. This project aims to address the security and scalability challenges that limit blockchain adoption. Existing blockchains do not scale and are vulnerable to attacks (e.g. with a total loss of over US$1 billion in 2019). This project expects to improve security by adaptively enforcing the currently broken security assumptions, and to improve scalability by designing blockchains with high concurrency via relaxed criteria on the ordering of transactions ....A Scalable and Adaptive-Resilient Blockchain. This project aims to address the security and scalability challenges that limit blockchain adoption. Existing blockchains do not scale and are vulnerable to attacks (e.g. with a total loss of over US$1 billion in 2019). This project expects to improve security by adaptively enforcing the currently broken security assumptions, and to improve scalability by designing blockchains with high concurrency via relaxed criteria on the ordering of transactions. The expected outcomes include foundations and practical solutions for self-adaptive, secure and scalable blockchains. The benefits of this would be improved confidence in and capacity for building blockchain applications, which have a predicted value of over US$3.1 trillion by 2030.Read moreRead less
Towards full lifecycle privacy protection on cloud. Privacy protection in user data on cloud is now at risk throughout all stages of user information lifecycle facing significant challenges such as stage adaptive protection, across-system protection, privacy invasion tracing and prediction. Current approaches mainly focus on a specific case at certain stage, hence cannot address those challenges properly by considering all stages. This project aims to systematically investigate those challenges ....Towards full lifecycle privacy protection on cloud. Privacy protection in user data on cloud is now at risk throughout all stages of user information lifecycle facing significant challenges such as stage adaptive protection, across-system protection, privacy invasion tracing and prediction. Current approaches mainly focus on a specific case at certain stage, hence cannot address those challenges properly by considering all stages. This project aims to systematically investigate those challenges and expects to establish innovative research and solutions for enabling full lifecycle privacy protection on cloud. The project outcomes will help to safeguard Australian community in fast-growing online cyber world, and benefit to fast-growing privacy sensitive data hosting and applications on cloud.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100641
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$305,754.00
Summary
Priced attribute-based encryption and its applications. This project aims to develop Priced Attribute-Based Encryption (PABE), a security mechanism. Access control is important for secure online information access. Access to encrypted data requires both private key and payment from earmarked funds specified by the access policy of encrypted data. This research will enable both authorisation and restriction of users while they access protected data anonymously. Expected outcomes include new model ....Priced attribute-based encryption and its applications. This project aims to develop Priced Attribute-Based Encryption (PABE), a security mechanism. Access control is important for secure online information access. Access to encrypted data requires both private key and payment from earmarked funds specified by the access policy of encrypted data. This research will enable both authorisation and restriction of users while they access protected data anonymously. Expected outcomes include new models, theories, techniques and PABE constructions. This research project is expected to contribute to cyber security in anonymous access control with advanced management for all Australians.Read moreRead less
Privacy-preserving online user matching. This project aims to develop efficient techniques to preserve the privacy of users of online matching websites used for finding employment, friends and partners. The project expects to generate new knowledge in privacy preserving user matching with multiple servers. The expected outcomes are new techniques that can find matching users without revealing their interests to the matching server and a prototype based on these techniques. This should alleviate ....Privacy-preserving online user matching. This project aims to develop efficient techniques to preserve the privacy of users of online matching websites used for finding employment, friends and partners. The project expects to generate new knowledge in privacy preserving user matching with multiple servers. The expected outcomes are new techniques that can find matching users without revealing their interests to the matching server and a prototype based on these techniques. This should alleviate the privacy concerns of people using online tools that require providing personal 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
Enhancing information credibility using mathematical prediction. The aim of this project is to develop theory, techniques, mathematical tools and practical algorithms for rumor detection and forecast in social media to enhance credibility of news, especially in time-sensitive situations and trending events. This project will significantly advance human knowledge of rumor formation, detection, and forecast, which will enable timely and efficient counter attacks. The outcomes from this project wil ....Enhancing information credibility using mathematical prediction. The aim of this project is to develop theory, techniques, mathematical tools and practical algorithms for rumor detection and forecast in social media to enhance credibility of news, especially in time-sensitive situations and trending events. This project will significantly advance human knowledge of rumor formation, detection, and forecast, which will enable timely and efficient counter attacks. The outcomes from this project will offer a reliable information environment for our society.Read moreRead less
Design and deployment of practical anonymous access systems. This project aims to design, test and deploy a practical and highly secure anonymous access system for online businesses that offer services on a free trial basis. Currently, online businesses are unable to take advantage of feedback from customers during and after trial periods; nor do currently available mechanisms offer practical privacy protection to customers. The project expects to overcome these barriers by developing innovative ....Design and deployment of practical anonymous access systems. This project aims to design, test and deploy a practical and highly secure anonymous access system for online businesses that offer services on a free trial basis. Currently, online businesses are unable to take advantage of feedback from customers during and after trial periods; nor do currently available mechanisms offer practical privacy protection to customers. The project expects to overcome these barriers by developing innovative cryptographic solutions and security testing methods that will inform new protocol design and implementation, which will bring long-term benefits to online businesses and their customers. The project also aims to develop new, distributed ledger technology, which is a strategic technology trend. This will provide significant benefits such as a practical, reliable and highly secure anonymous access system for online businesses, in Australia and worldwide, that offer services on a free trial basis, which would enable these service providers to add value to and enhance their product offerings.Read moreRead less
Cloud Security: Techniques for Securing Cloud Data and Services. Fundamental challenges in security and trust arise in cloud data storage and service provision. This project will achieve conceptual advances by proposing new security and trust models to secure cloud data and services. It will develop novel techniques to achieve efficient and secure cloud data management, propose new access control schemes for cloud services and develop new mechanisms for detecting sophisticated cyber threats. Thi ....Cloud Security: Techniques for Securing Cloud Data and Services. Fundamental challenges in security and trust arise in cloud data storage and service provision. This project will achieve conceptual advances by proposing new security and trust models to secure cloud data and services. It will develop novel techniques to achieve efficient and secure cloud data management, propose new access control schemes for cloud services and develop new mechanisms for detecting sophisticated cyber threats. This project will also propose a novel integrated trust enhanced cloud security architecture, enabling the design of adaptive secure systems which will be more resilient to dynamic cyber security attacks. It will demonstrate the proposed models and architecture using a practical cloud based online application.Read moreRead less
Private searching on streaming data. This project aims to explore secure and practical solutions for various internet search types and to develop a prototype of a private searching system to avoid compromising user privacy whilst sharing query requests. Searching of streaming data allows collection of useful information from huge streaming sources of data such as on-line news feeds and internet chat-rooms. Current solutions for this problem are inefficient and restricted to a couple of simple se ....Private searching on streaming data. This project aims to explore secure and practical solutions for various internet search types and to develop a prototype of a private searching system to avoid compromising user privacy whilst sharing query requests. Searching of streaming data allows collection of useful information from huge streaming sources of data such as on-line news feeds and internet chat-rooms. Current solutions for this problem are inefficient and restricted to a couple of simple search types, and vulnerable to identifying the search requester. The project expects to develop private searching tools to protect the privacy of user's search queries. This will have the potential to detect any attacks to our digital infrastructure while keeping the search criteria classified, and could have applications in Australian counter-terrorism and homeland defence.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150101116
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$315,000.00
Summary
Leakage-Resilient and Quantum-Secure Authenticated Key Exchange Protocols. Authenticated key exchange protocols allow multiple parties to establish a common secret key over a public network, and are a central component of network security. Key-leakage and quantum attacks are two primary threats against the existing protocols. This project aims to fill the gap by developing new authenticated key exchange protocols which are secure against both attacks. The new models, theories, and techniques dev ....Leakage-Resilient and Quantum-Secure Authenticated Key Exchange Protocols. Authenticated key exchange protocols allow multiple parties to establish a common secret key over a public network, and are a central component of network security. Key-leakage and quantum attacks are two primary threats against the existing protocols. This project aims to fill the gap by developing new authenticated key exchange protocols which are secure against both attacks. The new models, theories, and techniques developed in this project will produce technologies essential for securing data communications in current and future computer networks, and hence directly contribute to improving cybersecurity for all Australians.Read moreRead less