September 2020

Publications:

  • Muhammed Esgin, Ngoc Khanh Nguyen and Gregor Seiler, “Practical Exact Proofs from Lattices: New Techniques to Exploit Fully-Splitting Rings”, Asiacrypt 2020, Core rank: A, conditionally accepted, this paper introduces a novel exact zero-knowledge proof from lattices that is substantially more efficient than prior constructions. The paper is part of an external collaboration with IBM Research, Zurich (both of my co-authors are from IBM Research, Zurich).
  • Derui Wang, Chaoran Li, Sheng Wen, Surya Nepal, and Yang Xiang, “Man-in-the-Middle Attacks against Machine Learning Classifiers via Malicious Generative Models,” To appear in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing. Core rank: A. The paper proposes a variational method to generate adversarial examples, which makes it possible for real-time, cold-start adversarial example generation.
  • Editors: Ernst, A.T., Dunstall, S., García-Flores, R., Grobler, M., Marlow, D. (Eds.), Data and Decision Sciences in Action 2, Proceedings of the ASOR/DORS Conference 2018, Springer https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030601348

Projects

  • How concerned are you about the cyber security risks associated with your home Internet of Things (IoT) devices?

Should cyber security be an important consideration in the manufacturing of IoT devices? And would you pay extra for an IoT device which has assurances of low cyber security risk? The Internet of Things is growing rapidly, with an estimated 64 billion devices likely to be connected to the internet by 2025. But many of these devices have poor cyber security settings, leaving Australians and Aussie businesses vulnerable to cyber attacks.

In collaboration with Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, we’re conducting a survey to analyse the attitudes of Australian consumers and businesses regarding cyber security and Internet of Things devices, with insights used to inform future policy development.

Please complete the short survey to give us your thoughts on IoT and cyber security….https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6LX2NW7

  • Scholarships available in our Human Centric Team:

CSIRO’s Postgraduate Top-Up Scholarship Program provides enhanced opportunities in science and engineering for outstanding graduates enrolling each year at Australian tertiary institutions as postgraduates for research leading to the award of a PhD.  CSIRO PhD Top Up scholarships are now being offered in 40 CSIRO research areas, for funding commencing in financial year 2020-21.

Project name: Human-factor Security Analytics (Data61 3)
Location:   Various locations across Australia
Scholarship:  Top-up scholarship of $7,000 per annum, plus a generous operating budget of $10,000 per annum
For more information please contact Marthie Grobler or Mohan Baruwal Chhetri by emailing humancentricsecurity@csiro.au

For details of the research areas available please see document CSIRO Postgraduate Scholarships – Data61

https://jobs.csiro.au/job/Various-CSIRO-Postgraduate-Scholarships-Data61/671668800/

Students:

  • Mohammad Nosouhi, Caitlin Gray and Tina Wu have submitted their thesis
  • Sara Jafarbeiki had her confirmation seminar on 6 Aug 2020 and passed successfully

Let’s meet one of our students: Tina Wu

I’m Tingmin (Tina) Wu, a PhD student at Swinburne University. My thesis title is “Automatic Generation of Security-Centric Description for Cyber Threats”.  In the past three years, I worked under the supervision of Dr Cecile Paris and Dr Surya Nepal. My research aimed to ensure the users comprehend the cyber security information so that they can apply the advice it contains in practice. We implemented a system that learns users’ security concerns and linguistic preferences to generate personalised security-centric descriptions. We then conducted a subjective study to measure the level of users’ understanding of security texts. We also analysed the trending topics across the sources over time. Furthermore, to improve users’ ability to understand security texts, we developed a framework to build a user-oriented security-centric dictionary from multiple sources. We further proposed a language model for cyber security texts to extend the dictionary automatically. I really enjoyed the research experience at Data61. Without the professional guidance, support and encouragement of my supervisors, this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Dr Marthie Grobler for administrative arrangements and her constant support. I am grateful for many opportunities provided by Data61 such as the Summer School, to communicate with other researchers from different institutions.

After submitting my thesis, I have just started a postdoc position at Monash University jointly with CSIRO’s Data61. I am excited about the position to further my research collaborating with Data61.

New starters:

Tina Wu joined the Human Centric Security team page as Joint Venture Postdoctoral Fellow.

Media Activities

Our Program Sofware and Computational Systems has a new website, to discover our projects and great science https://research.csiro.au/scs/

Spotlight on some of our staff and students who are telling us a bit more about themselves:

Events

  • The Software and Computational Systems Program is organising a series of Students Workshops designed to equip our PhD students with extra tools that set them up to thrive during their time with SCS, and into employment.

This series of three workshops will focus on practical skills for students – how to write a competitive CV; how to approach self-marketing on social platforms; how to merge from independent research into group collaboration; how to generate and manage commercialisation opportunities. The sessions will also exposure students to real-world accounts of career journeys from senior research experts.

For more information: https://research.csiro.au/scs/scs-phd-student-workshop-sessions/

  • We are organising monthly free seminars in collaboration with Cyber Security CRC open to all, on Cyber security technical topics, inviting top experts from around the world as guest speakers.

Our next event: Streamlet: Textbook Streamlined Blockchains

Date: September 14, 10 AM – 11 AM AEST (September 13, 8 PM – 9 PM EST).

Guest Speaker: Professor Elaine Shi, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, http://elaineshi.com/

To register to our mailing list please send an email to sao@csiro.au

For more information or if you have missed previous events: https://research.csiro.au/cybersecurity-quantum-systems/our-sao-seminars/

For more information on our events visit our website: link