June 16, 2023 Avignon university (France)
Prof. Mauro Conti

Prof. Mauro Conti, University of Padua, Italy

Title: Covert & Side Stories: Threats Evolution in Traditional and Modern Technologies

Abstract: Alongside traditional Information and Communication Technologies, more recent ones like Smartphones and IoT devices also became pervasive. Furthermore, all technologies manage an increasing amount of confidential data. The concern of protecting these data is not only related to an adversary gaining physical or remote control of a victim device through traditional attacks, but also to what extent an adversary without the above capabilities can infer or steal information through side and covert channels! In this talk, we survey a corpus of representative research results published in the domain of side and covert channels, ranging from TIFS 2016 to more recent USENIX Security 2022, and including several demonstrations at Black Hat Hacking Conferences. We discuss threats coming from contextual information and to which extent it is feasible to infer very specific information. In particular, we discuss attacks like inferring actions that a user is doing on mobile apps, by eavesdropping their encrypted network traffic, identifying the presence of a specific user within a network through analysis of energy consumption, or inferring information (also key one like passwords and PINs) through timing, acoustic, or video information.

Bio: Mauro Conti is Full Professor at the University of Padua, Italy. He is also affiliated with TU Delft and University of Washington, Seattle. He obtained his Ph.D. from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, in 2009. After his Ph.D., he was a Post-Doc Researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2011 he joined as Assistant Professor at the University of Padua, where he became Associate Professor in 2015, and Full Professor in 2018. He has been Visiting Researcher at GMU, UCLA, UCI, TU Darmstadt, UF, and FIU. He has been awarded with a Marie Curie Fellowship (2012) by the European Commission, and with a Fellowship by the German DAAD (2013). His research is also funded by companies, including Cisco, Intel, and Huawei. His main research interest is in the area of Security and Privacy. In this area, he published more than 500 papers in topmost international peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He is Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Area Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, and has been Associate Editor for several journals, including IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, and IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management. He was Program Chair for TRUST 2015, ICISS 2016, WiSec 2017, ACNS 2020, CANS 2021, CSS 2021, WiMob 2023 and ESORICS 2023, and General Chair for SecureComm 2012, SACMAT 2013, NSS 2021 and ACNS 2022. He is Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the AAIA, Senior Member of the ACM, and Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe.

Adversarial Machine Learning

Adrien BECUE, THALES, FRANCE

Title: Adversarial Machine Learning applied to Intrusion Detection in Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract: Adversarial Machine Learning (AML) research has received considerable attention in artificial intelligence (AI) communities, mainly focusing on applications such as Computer Vision (CV) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Fewer research has been done in field of AML applied to Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and most of the works in this area have addressed IDS use in environments oriented towards Information Technology (IT). By contrast, the properties of Cyber- Physical Systems (CPS) render many AML threats from previous research infeasible. In such systems it may not be assumed that attackers gain full knowledge of ML inputs. Neither can features be assumed mutually independent. Large CPS are usually widely distributed, employ redundant data sources and Anomaly Detection Systems (ADS). In real-world scenarios, AML can be implemented either by means of physical intrusion (e.g. compromising sensors) or network intrusion (e.g. man in the middle attack). The above described constraints make AML attacks through physical intrusion extremely costly and uncertain. By contrast, most legacy CPS have are known to be weakly protected against cyber-attacks. In this context, IDSs become the first line of defense against credible attack scenarios on CPS and an immediate target of AML. Recent works have applied AML to IDS in IT environments. Much fewer studies address the specificities of CPSs although these can be very strategic, vulnerable and critical targets. We suggest further research be done in this area.

Bio: Adrien Bécue (M) is AI & Cybersecurity Expert at Thales. He graduated from Toulouse Business School in 2003 with a Master in Aerospace Management. In 2004, he joined the French defence procurement agency (DGA) as a Program Purchaser for Land Weapon systems. In this position he managed a portfolio of industrial and research projects driven by Network-Centric Warfare and Digital Battlefield transformations. He joined EADS group in 2008 to manage acquisition programs in Tactical Communication systems for the French Navy and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed in Afghanistan. In 2010 he became Research & Technology Project Manager for border security and maritime surveillance projects. In 2013 he joined the Airbus DS Cybersecurity as Research & Technology Coordinator for France and launched several projects with a focus on attack detection security of industrial control systems. In 2016 he was promoted Head of R&T and Innovation, taking over responsibility of the whole R&T portfolio of Airbus Cybersecurity across UK, France and Germany. In 2017 he won Eureka Award of Innovation for ADAX ITEA Project dealing with advanced detection and simulation-based decision support. In 2018 he won ITEA Award of Innovation for FUSE-IT Project dealing with security and energy efficiency for smart buildings. He working-group member at ECSO (European Cyber-Security Organization) Strategic Research & Innovation Roadmap and a member of ENISA's (European Network & Information Security Agency) expert groups for security of Industry 4.0 and IoT. As Coordinator of H2020 project SeCoIIA (Secure Collaborative Intelligence Industrial Automation), he was finalists of EC Industry 5.0 Awards. Since December 2022 he has joined the Thales Cyber-Defence Solutions where he is technical authority on artificial intelligence activities. He is member EDA Captech Cyber which provides European technology roadmaps for Cyber-Defence activities. He is involved in strategic projects in field of 5G security, connected mobility, combat cloud and intelligence.