29 May 2019 The Australian, Australia Author: Wilson da Silva • Section: Special Report • Article Type: News Item Audience : 94,448 • Page: 10 • Printed size: 1000.00cm² • Region: National Market: Australia • ASR: AUD 22,161 • words: 1619 • Item ID: 1125761215

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AI stands at the front line of the cyber war WILSON DA SILVA phishing and even eavesdrop- sonnel in the field. ping of optical fibre networks. As “So you would simulate the at- There’s a war on in cyberspace. you’d expect, no-one in Austra- tacker, and essentially train the Every day, hundreds of attacks lia’s defence community will machine-learning algorithm are mounted against computers admit to breaches or even at- against that kind of attacker,” and networks across Australia, tempted attacks — but logic added Nock. “It’s like training the with hackers searching for vul- would dictate that they are as immune system.” nerabilities, trying to access re- much a target as anyone else. Machine learning is the AI stricted systems, steal data or Which is why research into technique that powered Google corrupt networks. And it’s not countering cyber-attacks has DeepMind’s AlphaGo to become just banks or credit card com- been booming. And why at the the first program to defeat a 9-dan panies: our government and de- pointy end of the best is research world champion at the ancient fence systems are also a target. being done by the world’s de- Chinese game of Go in March For example, the breach in fence agencies, Australia among 2016. It relies on ‘reinforcement February of the federal parlia- them. learning’, which uses a neural net- ment’s computer network, At the CSIRO’s Data61 data work driven by a finely crafted al- which quickly spread to those of research division, computer en- gorithm that is exceptional at one the Liberal, Labor and National gineers developing highly soph- thing: learning what it needs to in parties. Luckily, hackers were isticated algorithms that hunt order to achieve its goals. detected early, and the Austra- through a computer network, As the neural net is exposed to lian Signals Directorate called in. constantly monitoring behav- more and more attacks, it builds a Prime Minister Scott Morrison iour and seeking to identify and database of incursions and teaches later told parliament that “a contain an intruder. itself to recognise patterns that no sophisticated state actor is re- But the engineers are not human could possibly discern. sponsible for this malicious ac- writing the software: they’re let- You can’t “look under the hood” tivity” — diplomatic code for a ting the algorithms write them- and necessarily understand how it foreign power. Experts pointed does it, just see that it does this very to China. selves. It’s called ‘adversarial well. It’s estimated 22 countries machine learning’, and led by DST Which is part of the problem can launch offensive cyber oper- and Data61, with researchers at with neural nets: how do you know ations, and there were more than the universities of Melbourne, if a sophisticated intruder, know- 50 state-sponsored attacks in Swinburne and Monash, it is one ing that you have a machine learn- 2018, according to the Council example of how artificial intelli- ing algorithm defending your on Foreign Relations in New gence, or AI, is playing a major part network, hasn’t itself developed York. Just this year, Chinese in defence research today. another machine learning algor- hackers tried to steal research on “Let’s say an adversary tries to ithm that is adept at disguising it- military maritime technology infect, attack or poison a server self from detection once it’s in the from 27 universities, US and Eu- which is located in your network,” system? Or even worse, subtly ropean think-tank networks said Data61’s Dr Richard Nock. “trains” your defensive algorithm were breached, and Indonesia “The goal of the machine learning to ignore its presence over time? accused Chinese and Russian algorithm is essentially to figure “It is a bit of an artificial intelli- hackers of modifying voter data- out what’s happening and correct gence arms race,” agreed Nock. bases to disrupt presidential the behaviour of the network. But But their project also aims to de- elections. to do that, it can only learn by feat such an attack strategy — “Ten years ago, this was al- being exposed to examples and ob- using superior mathematics. “It’s most science fiction,” said Dr servations of intrusions.” essentially a matter of the underly- Gareth Parker, a research leader It’s the cyber equivalent of at the cyber and electronic war- battlefield wargames: once the ing mathematics of your training fare division of Defence Science core machine learning software algorithm being the most robust it and Technology (DST) in Adel- has been developed and deployed can be … so it actually sees possible aide. “A decade ago, people were into a simulated defence computer tampering,” he added. still thinking in terms of antivirus network, scores of computer en- Also of growing concern is de- protection.” gineering students will try to hack tecting suspect behaviour across Now, there’s a phalanx of the system, either sneaking in un- the internet, an internal data net- threats: data scraping, keystroke detected or trying to wreak havoc work, or even over Wi-Fi — es- theft, distributed denial-of-ser- and disable the network. In short, pecially as a growing amount of vice attacks, worms and trojan they’ll try to emulate what an data is being encrypted. That’s horses, remote port scanning, enemy might attempt against a de- where Project Deep Bypass comes spoofing, ping floods, smurfing, fence installation or a computer in: developed by Data61, the Uni- system supporting military per- 29 May 2019 The Australian, Australia Author: Wilson da Silva • Section: Special Report • Article Type: News Item Audience : 94,448 • Page: 10 • Printed size: 1000.00cm² • Region: National Market: Australia • ASR: AUD 22,161 • words: 1619 • Item ID: 1125761215

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versity of Technology Sydney, the network, or bypass access controls out reading or tampering with the University of Sydney and DST, it and obtain unauthorised privileg- data, thereby keeping its quantum “sniffs” high-speed network data es and manipulate a computer or cryptography state intact. traffic and characterises encrypted server. While this is an ongoing “The complexity stays on the traffic. headache for every IT manager, in ground, where you generate the quantum state, send that to a Again, machine learning is key. a defence context it can mean the Deep Bypass uses three different spacecraft which then retransmits difference between life and death it,” said Dr Francis Bennet, an in- deep learning models and corre- in combat. sponding neural net architectures strument scientist at ANU’s “It’s quite a complex process Mount Stromlo Observatory. to filter data rapidly and search for finding vulnerabilities, and then key statistical characteristics. In “You don’t actually have to trust recognising those bugs that pose a the hardware on the spacecraft be- effect, it “fingerprints” data and security risk,” said Parker. So the even recognises content with cause it is unable to make a mea- researchers are developing an au- surement of those quantum states some accuracy. If the content has tomated analysis process for soft- been previously flagged as being of without completely destroying ware using a technique known as them.” interest to defence or intelligence symbolic execution, which has agencies — such as a terrorist Bennet is working on the laser “game-changing potential for communications component, propaganda video or hate speech computer security,” he said. video — Deep Bypass will recog- while the quantum memory is The researchers are also inter- under development by several nise this, and even identify which ested in combining symbolic ex- video was played, with 97 per cent groups, including at the ANU ecution with machine learning to node of the Centre for Quantum accuracy. create a new cyber weapon: rapid Computation & Communication “That was fairly impressive,” threat analysis, which would allow Technology, where Professor Ping said DST’s Parker. “But that’s defence engineers fighting off a Koy Lam is using an atomic spin- what you want to be able to do, to cyber-attack to not just identify wave approach, while colleague have a high-level look at the net- malicious code, but understand its Dr Matthew Sellars uses a rare work traffic and understand what ultimate mission or target. In the earth element, called erbium, em- people are using it for. And, of past, such approaches have taken a bedded in a crystal. course, identify malicious behav- lot of time and computer grunt; iour.” combining the methods suggests The goal of the machine learning algorithm DST is managing the Depart- this could now be done in minutes. is essentially to figure out what’s happening ment of Defence’s Next Gener- The goal is to develop techniques ation Technology Fund, which is that allow portable tools which can and correct the behaviour of the network spending $730 million over a dec- respond immediately, and autono- ade to develop novel solutions to mously — even to unknown defence challenges, is replete with cyber-attacks — as they occur. work on AI. Another project shep- Cryptography is another area. herded by DST and Data61, this Long on the front line of protect- time involving Monash and Dea- ing both military and civilian net- kin universities, is designed to use works, it relies on scrambling AI to find flaws in network or other communications with devilishly software that can be exploited by complex mathematical formulae an attacker. that would take decades of compu- All software has bugs — errors tational time to crack. But even or flaws that produce incorrect re- better is quantum cryptography, sults or makes programs behave in which depends on the spooky unintended ways. Such errors properties of quantum mechanics arise because software is designed to make it entirely unbreakable. and written by humans; it’s esti- Problem is, quantum cryp- mated that every 1000 lines of soft- tography works best over short ware code has at least one error or distances and on secure fibre net- flaw. Finding and fixing bugs is dif- works. At the Australian National ficult, and even the best program- University, however, physicists are mers, using the most sophisticated working on techniques to allow debugging tools, cannot find all quantum cryptography to be used flaws, or anticipate how multiple on secure defence communica- software and hardware layers will tions via satellite with a quantum- interact with each other. encrypted laser communications That’s what hackers rely on: system. It is paired with “quantum they study tranches of software memory” which can capture, and minutely, looking for flaws that store, information encoded in can give them a backdoor into a laser beams sent to a satellite with-