Dynamic resource provisioning for autonomic management of cloud computing environments. In the next 20 years, service-oriented computing will play an important role in shaping the industry and will require cloud infrastructure hosting applications to deliver services at low cost. This project will develop technologies for self-managed cloud computing platforms that reduce usage and operational costs, thus transforming the Australian economy.
Algorithms and Software Systems for Management of Software-Defined Clouds. This project seeks to develop technologies for more powerful and lower-cost cloud computing. Cloud computing offers utility-oriented information technology services to users worldwide. Based on pay-as-you-go model, it enables hosting of pervasive applications from consumer, scientific and business domains. However, applications are unable to harness the full power of the cloud due to partial virtualisation and lack of int ....Algorithms and Software Systems for Management of Software-Defined Clouds. This project seeks to develop technologies for more powerful and lower-cost cloud computing. Cloud computing offers utility-oriented information technology services to users worldwide. Based on pay-as-you-go model, it enables hosting of pervasive applications from consumer, scientific and business domains. However, applications are unable to harness the full power of the cloud due to partial virtualisation and lack of integrated management of compute and network resources of data centres. This project aims to transform cloud computing by developing architectural principles for software-defined clouds; algorithms and policies for integrated allocation of compute and network resources to meet quality-of-service requirements of applications; and a novel software technology for energy-efficient management of software-defined clouds.Read moreRead less
Provable elimination of information leakage through timing channels. This project aims to develop techniques to solve the issue in information security of unauthorised information flow resulting from competition for shared hardware resources. The project will combine operating systems design, formal hardware models, information-flow reasoning and theorem proving to achieve a goal that is widely considered infeasible. The project is expected to result in a system that prevents leakage of critical ....Provable elimination of information leakage through timing channels. This project aims to develop techniques to solve the issue in information security of unauthorised information flow resulting from competition for shared hardware resources. The project will combine operating systems design, formal hardware models, information-flow reasoning and theorem proving to achieve a goal that is widely considered infeasible. The project is expected to result in a system that prevents leakage of critical information, such as encryption keys, through timing channels. This should prevent sophisticated attacks on public clouds, mobile devices and military-grade cross-domain devices.Read moreRead less
Detecting Firmware Vulnerabilities in Smart Home Devices. 83% of Australians have smart home devices. 47% claim they have three or more. These devices are easily targeted by cyber-attacks, and searching for their vulnerabilities has become more crucial than ever. Our industry partner GPG is actively looking for ways to detect vulnerabilities in their smart home products, but have not found any existing methods that satisfy three critical requirements: 1) massive search, 2) cross platform detecti ....Detecting Firmware Vulnerabilities in Smart Home Devices. 83% of Australians have smart home devices. 47% claim they have three or more. These devices are easily targeted by cyber-attacks, and searching for their vulnerabilities has become more crucial than ever. Our industry partner GPG is actively looking for ways to detect vulnerabilities in their smart home products, but have not found any existing methods that satisfy three critical requirements: 1) massive search, 2) cross platform detection, and 3) finding unseen vulnerabilities. We therefore propose to use a series of new techniques such as efficient in-memory fuzzing, conditional formulas, and transfer learning to solve the above challenges. The project outcomes will help Australia gain cutting edge techniques in vulnerability detection. Read moreRead less
Resource management algorithms and software systems for green cloud computing. Service-oriented computing will play an important role in shaping society. It needs cloud infrastructure to host applications for delivering services at the lowest cost. This project will create technologies for energy-efficient cloud computing, reducing its operational cost and environmental impact, thus transforming the Australian economy.
Business goals and analytics driven management of cloud computing based information technology infrastructure. Businesses and government are dependent on the reliability of their information technology (IT) infrastructure to provide services to customers. While cloud computing offers a promising IT platform, greater resilience is needed. This project will develop techniques to reliably manage cloud platforms, and thus improve the competitiveness of Australian business.
Secure user authentication with continuous adaptive risk evaluation. Users typically authenticate to any given system only once - when they first access it (for example, through providing a password or fingerprint). The prevalence of single sign-on further allows this single authentication to be sufficient for access to multiple systems. Thus an adversary can obtain a large degree of access from stealing a single password, hijacking a user's session, or even simply borrowing their phone. This pr ....Secure user authentication with continuous adaptive risk evaluation. Users typically authenticate to any given system only once - when they first access it (for example, through providing a password or fingerprint). The prevalence of single sign-on further allows this single authentication to be sufficient for access to multiple systems. Thus an adversary can obtain a large degree of access from stealing a single password, hijacking a user's session, or even simply borrowing their phone. This project aims to develop a continuous authentication approach based on user behaviour - typical interactions plus biometrics (for example, keystroke dynamics) - combined with a risk adaptive assessment of the resources being accessed, resulting in re-authentication requests in the event of a suspected compromise.Read moreRead less
Re-engineering internet timekeeping for scalability, accuracy and trust. This project aims to define and solve problems underpinning a secure and extensible system for network timekeeping, and implement and test a prototype under realistic conditions over the Internet. All computers incorporate a software clock, essential to software applications. A network is an inexpensive and convenient way to synchronise these clocks, but the Internet currently depends on an unreliable and insecure approach. ....Re-engineering internet timekeeping for scalability, accuracy and trust. This project aims to define and solve problems underpinning a secure and extensible system for network timekeeping, and implement and test a prototype under realistic conditions over the Internet. All computers incorporate a software clock, essential to software applications. A network is an inexpensive and convenient way to synchronise these clocks, but the Internet currently depends on an unreliable and insecure approach. The expected outcome will be trusted, accurate and reliable software clocks that support applications like cloud computing, billing systems and secure communications, which could become the timekeeping system for the Internet and the Internet of Things.Read moreRead less
Virtual Environments for Improved Enterprise Software Deployment. This project aims to improve quality assurance for enterprise IT. Enterprise IT systems are highly interconnected and interdependent — a failure in one system can cause a cascade of failures across multiple systems, bringing business to a standstill. The project aims to create new technologies to automate the provisioning of virtual deployment environments to test the enterprise systems. In particular, it aims to develop new metho ....Virtual Environments for Improved Enterprise Software Deployment. This project aims to improve quality assurance for enterprise IT. Enterprise IT systems are highly interconnected and interdependent — a failure in one system can cause a cascade of failures across multiple systems, bringing business to a standstill. The project aims to create new technologies to automate the provisioning of virtual deployment environments to test the enterprise systems. In particular, it aims to develop new methods for the automatic analysis of service interaction traces and the generation of accurate executable service models, without requiring explicit knowledge of them. The automatic analysis and generation should reduce development cost for enterprise IT systems and increase system quality and reliability. The new software deployment technologies from this project aim to significantly reduce the time, effort and cost of system quality assurance activities in software development organisations, and yet produce higher-quality software leading to uninterrupted business operation in end-user organisations across all sectors.Read moreRead less
A fast and effective automated insider threat detection and prediction system. Threats from insiders directly compromises the security, privacy and integrity of Australian e-commerce, large databases and communication channels. This project will provide an essential step in combating this criminal activity by developing methods to detect such threats and secure the public's information against exposure and identity theft.