Keynotes
Interplay of AI and Cybersecurity: How Will it Affect Us All?
Prof. Atilla Elçi
Hasan Kalyoncu University, TürkiyeAbstract
AI has come strong this time. It looks like it is here to stay and plays an increasingly decided role in all niches of our lives. We would be most concerned with the safety and security aspects where AI and cybersecurity interact. On the one hand, AI helps enhance cybersecurity, and just at the same stance, it equips adversaries to enhance their capabilities. Let's look at how AI interacts with cybersecurity- how each is indispensable for the other. We shall survey AI's part in cybersecurity, security's role in AI use, ethical issues, whether AI is what we expect it to be, and how organizations try to cope with the interplay.
Biography
Prof. Dr. Atilla ELÇI is a full Software Engineering professor at Hasan Kalyoncu University, Türkiye. He served as faculty and chairman in computer engineering and software engineering departments in several universities in Turkey and abroad. He started several BSc, MSc, and PhD programs. He has published over a hundred journal and conference papers and book chapters; co-authored The Composition of OWL-S based Atomic Processes (LAP Lambert, 2011); edited the Semantic Agent Systems (Springer, 2011), Theory and Practice of Cryptography Solutions for Secure Information Systems (2013), The Handbook of Applied Learning Theory and Design in Modern Education (2016), Metacognition and Successful Learning Strategies in Higher Education (2017), Contemporary Perspectives on Web-Based Systems (2018), Handbook of Research on Faculty Development for Digital Teaching and Learning (2019), Artificial Intelligence Paradigms for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (2021), Challenges and Applications of Data Analytics in Social Perspectives (2021), Future of Digital Technology and AI in Social Sectors (2024), Cutting-Edge Technologies for Business Sectors (2024), Multifaceted Uses of Cutting-Edge Technologies and Social Concerns all by IGI Global, 2024), and the proceedings of SIN Conferences 2007-20 (ACM) and 2021-24 (IEEE), ESAS 2006-24 (IEEE CS). He initiated and ran ESAS workshops and SIN Conferences. He delivers keynote speeches at international conferences on educational technology, web semantics, machine learning, knowledge representation and ontology, and information security.
Side channel Attacks, Remote Power Attacks and Countermeasures
Prof. Sridevan Parameswaran
The University of Sydney, AustraliaAbstract
Deep devastation is felt when privacy is breached, personal information is lost, or property is stolen. Now imagine when all of this happens at once, and the victim is unaware of its occurrence until much later. This is the reality, as an increasing number of electronic devices are used as keys, wallets and files. Security attacks targeting embedded systems illegally gain access to information or destroy information. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is used to protect many of these embedded systems. While mathematically shown to be quite secure, it is now well known that AES circuits and software implementations are vulnerable to side channel attacks. Side-channel attacks are performed by observing properties of the system (such as power consumption, electromagnetic emission, etc.) while the system performs cryptographic operations. In this talk, differing power-based attacks are described, and various countermeasures are explained. A countermeasure titled Algorithmic Balancing is described in detail. Implementation of this countermeasure in hardware and software is described. Since process variation impairs countermeasures, we show how this countermeasure can be made to overcome process variations. In the next part of the talk, Remote power attacks are described, and novel sensors are demonstrated which enable stealthy deployment of attacks on Cloud based FPGAs (such as the Amazon Cloud FPGA).
Biography
Sri Parameswaran is the Head of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Sydney. Prior to that he was a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales. He also served as the Program Director for Computer Engineering. His research interests are in System Level Synthesis, Low power systems, High Level Systems, Security, Genomic Systems and Network on Chips. He served as the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, and has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, the EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems and the Design Automation of Embedded Systems. He has served on the Program Committees of Design Automation Conference (DAC), Design and Test in Europe (DATE), the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), the International Conference on Hardware/Software Code-sign and System Synthesis (CODES-ISSS), and the International Conference on Compilers, Architectures and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES). Sri Parameswaran is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Autonomous UAVs for Wildfire Management: AI-Driven Solutions for Next-Generation Emergency Response
A/Prof. Fatemeh Afghah
Clemson University.Abstract
The deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in wildfire management and disaster response represents a paradigm shift in leveraging intelligent systems for emergency operations. UAVs, equipped with advanced sensing capabilities such as thermal cameras and high-resolution imaging, are uniquely suited to perform rapid situational assessments in hazardous, inaccessible areas. These systems can detect and track wildfire dynamics, provide real-time data for fire progression modeling, and assist in prioritizing resource allocation for mitigation efforts. By minimizing the need for human exposure to dangerous environments, UAVs offer a safer and more effective alternative to traditional disaster response approaches. Despite the potential of UAVs, current operational frameworks are often constrained by manual control paradigms, involving ground-based commanders or operators in manned aircraft. These configurations not only limit the scalability of UAV deployments but also expose operators to operational risks. Fully autonomous UAV systems present a transformative solution, capable of executing complex, large-scale missions with minimal human intervention. Autonomous drones can dynamically coordinate, communicate, and perform tasks such as fire perimeter monitoring, hotspot detection, and real-time mapping through the integration of cutting-edge AI and multi-agent collaboration algorithms. In this talk, we will present our recent advancements in autonomous UAV systems for wildfire management. This includes innovations in distributed communication protocols, cooperative path planning, decentralized task allocation, and AI-driven wildfire detection and mapping. We will also discuss the integration of these technologies into a scalable, low-cost framework for enabling intelligent, adaptive, and autonomous UAV fleets to address the multifaceted challenges of wildfire management in real-world scenarios.
Biography
Fatemeh Afghah is an Associate Professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Clemson University. Prior to joining Clemson University, she was an Associate Professor (2020-2021) and an Assistant Professor (2015-2020) with the School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University, where she was the Director of Wireless Networking and Information Processing (WiNIP) Laboratory. Her research interests include wireless communication networks, decision-making in multi-agent systems, radio spectrum management, UAV networks, security and artificial intelligence in healthcare. Her recent project involves autonomous decision-making in uncertain environments, using autonomous vehicles for disaster management and IoT security. Her research has been continuously supported by NSF, AFRL, AFOSR, NIH, and Arizona Board of Regents, where she has served in the role of PI or the sole PI for grants with a total of over $4.8M and in the role of Co-PI for grants with a value of $5M. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award in 2019, the NSF CAREER Award in 2020, NAU's Most Promising New Scholar Award in 2020, NSF CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Award in 2017, AFRL Visiting Research Faculty Award in 2016 and 2017. and NC Space grant's New Investigator award in 2015.
She is an inventor/co-inventor of 5 patents and an author/co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications. She served as the associate editor for several journals, including Elsevier Ad hoc Networks, Computer Network Journal, Springer Neural Processing Letters and Frontiers Aerial and Space Networks Journal. She is an IEEE Senior member and was the chair and organizer of the IEEE Communications and Signal Processing Chapter at the IEEE Central North Carolina Section. She served as the representative of IEEE regions R1-6 on the membership board standing committee for the IEEE Signal Processing Society (2016-18) and as Mentoring co-chair (2019-2021) and Advocate co-chair (2015-2016) for the N2W
Establishing Trustworthy Data Sharing and Use Frameworks
Dr. Ian Oppermann
University of Technology SydneyAbstract
Data is the lifeblood of the modern economy. It impacts, enables and personalises how we work, play and engage socially and is also crucial for the operation of government and the economy. Banks and financial services companies can be described as data and digital services organisations with some bricks and mortar operations. Value comes from creating, using, protecting and sharing data. Use of data is a very wide and vague topic, incorporating analysis, storage, aggregation, dissemination and deletion. The value of data is unleashed through sharing. The challenge within any sharing or use relationship is "can I trust the data or data product you have tried to share with me?". When that data product is a chart or an analytical insight, it is easier to apply tests on source of origin, governance and methods of analysis. When the data product is the output of complex AI systems, there is little in the way of frameworks to test the image, video, voice message or other generated result. This keynote seeks to outline frameworks which help answer important questions about data and products derived from data: How can I determine if data is fit for the purposes, I plan to use it for? How can I provide guidance / restrictions / prohibitions for future uses of the products I create from this data? How can I enforce restrictions / prohibitions for future uses of the products I create from data? How can I determine if a data product has been manipulated in ways that I did not expect?
Biography
Dr Ian Oppermann is a Digital Economy thought leader, a highly-cited researcher, and a regular speaker about big data, broadband enabled services and the impact of technology on society. Ian is an Associate Industry Professor in the Faculty of Engineering & IT at UTS and the co-founder of ServiceGen. From 2015 to 2023, Ian was the NSW Government's Chief Data Scientist working within the Department of Customer Service, where he chaired the 11-member NSW Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee that is advising the State Government on how it should use the technology. The committee also developed a world-first AI assurance framework for government projects. Ian has nearly 30 years' experience in the Information and Communication Technology sector and has led large organizations that deliver products and services that have reached millions of people around the world. He has held senior management roles in Europe and Australia, including Director for Radio Access Performance at Nokia, Global Head of Sales Partnering (network software) at Nokia Siemens Networks, and Divisional Chief and Flagship Director at the CSIRO. He has contributed to six books and co-authored more than 120 papers, which have been cited more than 4000 times. Ian is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia, the IEEE, the NSW Royal Society, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and is a Fellow and past President of the Australian Computer Society. He is also a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, president of the Australia National Committee of the IEC, and president of the JTC1 strategic advisory committee in Australia.
Ian has an MBA from the University of London and a PhD in Mobile Telecommunications from the University of Sydney.
Election verification for computer scientists
Dr. Vanessa Teague
CEO, Thinking Cybersecurity Pty. LtdAbstract
In this talk we will discuss some good ideas for election verification and evidence, as well as some recent examples of practical failures. We'll discuss the state of election security in Australia, and possibly the USA, and think about what technologists can do to improve the situation.
Biography
Dr Vanessa Teague is an Associate Professor (Adjunct.) at the ANU College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics. Dr Teague is a cryptographer living and working on Wurundjeri land in southeastern Australia (near Melbourne). She is interested in cryptographic protocols that support a free and democratic society. She works on openly-available research and open-source software for supporting democratic decision making and empowering ordinary people to make choices about their own data. Dr Teague's research focuses primarily on cryptographic methods for achieving security and privacy, particularly for issues of public interest such as election integrity and the protection of government data. She was part of the team (with Chris Culnane and Ben Rubinstein) who discovered the easy re-identification of doctors and patients in the Medicare/PBS open dataset released by the Australian Department of Health. Joint work with Andrew Conway has identified several errors in deployed official Australian STV vote counting software, most of which was corrected as a consequence. She has co-designed numerous protocols for improved election integrity in e-voting systems, and co-discovered serious weaknesses in the cryptography of deployed e-voting systems in New South Wales, Western Australia and Switzerland.
Cloud Computing Security: Past, Present and Future
Prof. Willy Susilo
Distinguished Professor at the School of Computing and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at the University of Wollongong (UOW), AustraliaAbstract
Cloud computing is considered as one of the most prominent paradigms in the information technology industry, since it can significantly reduce the costs of hardware and software resources in computing infrastructure. This convenience has enabled corporations to efficiently use cloud storage as a mechanism to share data and cloud computing as a mechanism to outsource computing. One of the most important works in the area of cloud computing is how to provide security protections. The work in the cryptography literature has been very rich in this area, as it has been studied in the past two decades. In this lecture, we will revisit the topics that researchers have been studying. Specifically, we will provide an overview on what research topic that was studied, and currently being studied in the literature. We provide a comprehensive understanding of cloud computing research based on the published papers spanning from 2007 to 2023. Furthermore, we also discuss the gap between theory and the implementation of the proposed solutions.
Biography
Willy Susilo is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Computing and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. He holds the most prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council. He is the director of Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology, School of Computing and Information Technology, UOW. Recently, he was awarded the 2024 NSW Premier's Prizes for Science and Engineering due to his research work. He is an IEEE Fellow, an IET Fellow, an ACS Fellow, an AAIA Fellow and an AIIA Fellow. Previously, he was awarded the prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2009. He has published more than 500 papers in journals and conference proceedings in cryptography and network security. In 2016, he was awarded the ``Researcher of the Year" at UOW, due to his research excellence and contributions. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Information journal and the Special Content Editor of the Elsevier's Computer Standards and Interfaces. He is also serving as an Associate Editors in several international journals, including IEEE Transactions. He has also served as the program committee member of several international conferences.