December 2022

March 29th, 2023

Published papers

  • Shahroz Tariq, Binh M Le, and Simon S Woo. “Towards an Awareness of Time Series Anomaly Detection Models’ Adversarial Vulnerability” at CIKM ’23 (CORE A). This work demonstrates that the performance of state-of-the-art DNN- and GNN-based anomaly detection methods are degraded substantially by adding only small adversarial perturbations to the sensor data.  The overarching goal of this research is to raise awareness of the adversarial vulnerabilities of time series anomaly detectors.
  • Cody Christopher, Kristen Moore, David Liebowitz. “SchemaDB: A Dataset for Structures in Relational Data” at AusDM’22. We have constructed and are releasing a new dataset to enable the study of relational structures in structured databases. This was born from a need to be able to generate artifacts to use for cyber deception purposes, which requires a training set of examples to learn from. We present this dataset, as well as outline some potential research avenues and broader applications.

Publications accepted

  • Shang Wang, Yansong Gao, Anmin Fu, Zhi Zhang, Yuqing Zhang, Willy Susilo, Dongxi Liu, “CASSOCK: Viable Backdoor Attacks against DNN in the Wall of Source-Specific Backdoor Defenses”, accepted at AsiaCCS’23 [DSS target list conference]. This work proposes a new class of viable source-specific backdoor attacks. Its key insight is that trigger designs when creating poisoned data and cover data in source-specific backdoor attacks play a crucial role in demonstrating a viable source-specific attack, which has not been considered by existing attacks.

Our year in pictures

Revisit with us 2022 for DSS in pictures by clicking on the link below.

2022

Projects

  • “When humans are involved, cyber becomes complicated”. Listen to Dr Marthie Grobler and others share their thoughts on phishing, online scams and human centric security. ‘Anatomy of a scam —  episode ‘Gone Phishing: the racehorse trainer, the Mercedes-Benz, and the missing $100,000’ follows the journey of scam emails and calls, and why the human factor is so critically important in educating users to become more resilient against phishing attacks. https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/podcasts/anatomy-of-a-scam?utm_source=D61SocialMedia&utm_medium=D61SocialMedia&utm_campaign=AoaS&utm_content=AoaS&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=InsideData61-InsideData61-Edition-60&utm_source=InsideData61-InsideData61-Edition-60-email-20221130
  • Understanding the ethical implications of quantum computing for cybersecurity using a responsible innovation approach
    • Our research explores the risks of quantum computing to cybersecurity from the perspectives of stakeholders in the cybersecurity and quantum computing domains. Utilising the current ‘emergence’ phase of quantum computing development, we took a responsible innovation approach to focus on foresighting or future-preparation activities. We included both technical and ethical risks in the research design to allow a broad capture of data, and to ensure no risk blind spots are missed. Our abstract for a poster at the Quantum Australia conference 2023 was accepted: Abstract: Risks of Quantum Computing Cybersecurity: Perspectives from experts and professionals; Authors: Coates R, Baruwal Chhetri M, Liu D, Pieprzyk J, Richelle R, Kang W, Kwashie S, Wu T, Nepal, S

Talks and Conferences

  • Cécile Paris, Surya Nepal, Mohan Baruwal Chhetri, Fatemeh Jalalvand are organising as session in the Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM) 2023 conference next year. Please consider submitting an extended abstract or full paper to the Session on Simulation-based Analysis for Cybersecurity Decision-Making at MODSIM2023
    contact: Cécile Paris, Surya Nepal, Mohan Baruwal Chhetri, Fatemeh Jalalvand

  • Usman Muhammad was on a panel at the 2022 South Australia Investment Conference in Adelaide. Topic: South Australia’s future in developing opportunities in the global applications of quantum technologies. Further information here: https://www.saic2022.au/
  • Mohan Baruwal Chhetri is on the SERVICES Congress Advisory Program Committee for SERVICES 2023

  • Our group enjoyed  the visit of Prof. Lam from NTU, Singapore, 23 Nov 2022 at our Marsfield site. He also presented his research during one of our CRC/Data61 SAO seminar.

Title: Digitalization, Digital Trust and TrustTech

Recording: https://webcast.csiro.au/#/videos/05b8319c-9449-4831-8f0e-74e4f8689b99

  • Sydney team including Sharif Abudbba, Chamikara Mahawaga Arachchige attended TCS APAC summit in Sydney on the 8-9 November 2022 as part of cybersecurity CRC to represent few of our projects like Smartshield, PIF, Gamifications, etc. joined by Helge Janicke, Cyber Security CRC.

Good news

  • Melbourne staff team members attended our group meeting, time for a long due updated picture.

Staff

Welcome Fatemeh Jalalvand, Amena Khatun, Eromanga Adermann and Zeheng Wang our Impossible Without You new recruits.

  • Fatemeh is a postdoctoral research fellow at Data61, working on human-centric cybersecurity, human machine collaboration for cybersecurity. Previously she worked as a research associate at Capability Systems Centre, School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra. She also did her PhD at UNSW Canberra. Fatemeh is interested in the application of Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Decision Analytics, Decision Optimisation, Decision-Making Support Systems, Multi-Criteria/Multi-Objective Decision Making, Incorporating Plural Human Views into Decision Making Analytics, Decision Making under Risk/Uncertainty, Systems Engineering, Systems Science, Systems Thinking and Modelling, Optimisation, Simulation, Simulation-Optimisation and Metaheuristics on the area of Human Machine Collaboration for Cybersecurity.
  • Amena joined as a CERC fellow at CSIRO’s Data61 in 2022. She received her PhD from Signal Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Vision Technologies (SAIVT) research group within the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics (EER) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia in 2021. Previously, she was working at QUT as a Research Fellow at the School of EER. Dr Amena actively researches in the fields of computer vision and machine learning. Her work has found applications in various domains including person re-identification, object detection and classification, face verification and identification, image segmentation, domain adaptation, security and surveillance etc. She received Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship (RTP), QUT Higher Degree Research Tuition Fee Sponsorship and QUT Excellence Top-Up in 2017. Dr Amena received QUT’s HDR High Achiever Award in August 2021 for excellent performance in her research. She has several high-quality journal and conference publications in highly ranked venues such as Pattern Recognition and IEEE Transactions.
  • Eromanga: I am a researcher in quantum computing, algorithms and applications at CSIRO’s Data61 with a diverse background of skills and interests. I completed my PhD in astrophysics & cosmology in 2019 where I identified new ways of probing the nature of dark energy through observations made by next-generation telescopes, then spent 3-4 years in industry as a data scientist and consultant, where I was involved in building machine learning models to solve industry-relevant problems. I am now applying my skills and knowledge in physics, research and machine learning to problems in quantum computing, with the goal of advancing our capabilities in the field and increasing our potential to deliver positive impacts to society through the use of quantum computers.
  • Zeheng is CERC Fellow appointed through the Impossible Without You campaign. He received his PhD degree in Si quantum computing devices from UNSW. He also has experience in III-V semiconductor devices, semiconductor physics and modelling, and TCAD simulations. In these areas, he has published more than 30 scientific papers in prestigious journals, such as Nature and IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, and flagship conferences, such as IEEE ISPSD and IEEE ICSICT. He was associate editor of Frontiers in Electronics and is an active reviewer for many leading journals published by, e. g., Elsevier, IOP, and Wiley. His open-source online service for semiconductor fabrication has been visited by more than 300 researchers all over the world. He holds two patents in the regime of semiconductor devices. Currently, his research interests include applied physics, quantum artificial intelligence, and micro/nano manufacturing/fabrication.

 

We have said goodbye to Muhammed Esgin on the 16/12.Congratulations to him who is now a full time lecturer at Monash University

 

Join us

You want to work with a great team of people and do cutting edge research?
We have now 11 positions open at the moment in several areas including engineering. Check them out. All available on our website
https://jobs.csiro.au/. Applications closing soon.

Students Update

  • We are welcoming 4 vacation students:

Humphrey Yang, Haonan Zhong, and Rhea Chang, and Akbar Fadiansyah

My name is Haonan Zhong, third-year computer science student from UNSW. I’m interested in artificial intelligence technologies, in particular computer vision technologies and their related applications. My research topic for this summer student vacation project is security in AI. Through this project at CSIRO, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of cutting-edge artificial intelligence research and to develop and enhance my research skills and prepare me for honours degree in the coming year and for my PhD application afterwards.

Hi everyone, my name is Humphrey Yang. I am currently a fourth-year student at ANU studying Politics, Economics, and Philosophy, and Data Science. My research interest is in the application of ML/AI and social network analysis. I am currently working with my teammates on an AI security project to design attack and watermarking methods targeting models. We hope this could help us to tackle the issue of the misuse of machine learning algorithms and enhance copyright protection. It has been an inspiring experience to work with my peers to solve complex questions at CSIRO and to explore topics that I am interested in as well as what other students are working on.

Jiamin Chang: From the University of New South Wales and for belcher degrees in Computer Science. My major is Artificial Intelligence and I have past experience with Computer Vision and Deep Learning. I am very interested in security in AI to prevent damage from attacking deep learning models. I hope to get a further understanding of cyber security, and its connection with artificial intelligence in this project, and helps me better prepare for my further studies.

Akbar Fadiansyah is a Vacation student member with the Distributed Systems Security group at CSIRO’s Data61. He is currently studying Software Engineering at Monash University, with a minor in Cybersecurity. His experiences include being a committee member of Monash Cyber Security Club (MonSec) in 2022 as a social media and communications officer and later as secretary. He also worked part-time in 2022 as research assistant at Monash University, helping to implement post-quantum cryptography algorithms as part of the open-source Bouncy Castle library. Other projects include RABIT, an open-source data visualisation toolkit for Bayesian parameter estimation data.

 

 

 

  • We are also hosting a PAWSEY student

Aashima is a final-year computing and software systems undergraduate at the University of Melbourne. Her main interest lies in using data to find answers to impactful questions. Her research interests lie in the domain of statistical machine learning, quantitative analysis and artificial intelligence. In the past, she undertook a research position at IIT Bombay. She researched the effect of COVID-induced lockdowns on various payment methods in India by doing exploratory and predictive data analysis in Python and MS Excel.  Research paper link: https://ssca.org.in/media/14_18_1_2020_SA_Ashish_COVID1.5_115MfGN.pdf; Published in SSCA(https://ssca.org.in/)

 

  • Our four french vacation students are finishing before the holidays, good luck to them in their new adventures.

Networking

  • Farina, one of our PhD students is an active networker.

Farina: I went on the conference “The Australian Institute of Physics Industry Day on #Future of #Quantum at CSIRO”. I met CSIRO Chief Scientist and other few personal of our team. Also, we have done a tour of Quantum Lab.

  • M.A.P. Chamikara visited the CSCRC and DGov teams, with Ian Opperman from NSW Government.

Regular Events

  • DSS group is launching Quantum Systems monthly seminar series, for more info

https://research.csiro.au/cybersecurity-quantum-systems/current-quantum-security-seminars/

Data61 has established a new quantum technology program, focused in the areas of quantum software, quantum security, and quantum algorithms & applications. This seminar series will invite quantum experts to provide an updated summary of the global research on the topics of interest, highlight key challenges in the development of quantum technologies and stimulate new ideas for future research directions. The seminar series will also provide engagement and networking opportunities for Data61 researchers. The seminars will be scheduled on the last Wednesday (3-4 PM AEST) of every month.

In collaboration with Quantum Technology FSP (Prof Jim Rabeau); for more info https://research.csiro.au/qt/