ASU cybersecurity experts are creating solutions to protect us for the future
ASU cybersecurity experts are looking ahead at emerging challenges and creating solutions that can be employed before those problems gain a foothold. Illustration by Andy Keena/ASU Knowledge Enterprise
Editor’s note: This is part two of our series for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Read part onefor ASU experts’ insights into how scammers trick us and how you can protect yourself.
Story highlights
- ASU cybersecurity experts anticipate new cybersecurity challenges and are working on solutions to prepare for them.
- Understanding how vulnerabilities in robots could impact security will help us keep them working safely.
- Capturing the biological patterns associated with human speech can help verify if a voice is real or cloned.
- Creating a way for sub-systems in a network to prove their trustworthiness will prevent a small breach from causing a major breakdown.
A hacked robot assistant gathers intel to steal the identity of a senior in a care facility. A caller with a deepfake of a loved one’s voice begs a family member to pay a ransom to a “kidnapper.” A compromised car sensor prevents it from braking safely.
Cybersecurity is a shifting landscape, and new technologies, for all their promise, can also threaten new nightmare scenarios.
That is why experts across Arizona State University are going beyond addressing today’s challenges to create proactive approaches that prevent these cybersecurity nightmares from becoming reality.
These cybersecurity researchers are creating solutions that can be employed before emerging challenges have the chance to gain a foothold in our lives or impact our national security.
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Keeping bots and bugs in check
AI is ushering in a new era for robotics. Thanks to advances in large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude, robots can read human language and behavior more clearly than before.
More helpful robots can be useful in more places, like warehouses, hospitals, senior care facilities and homes. But Tiffany Bao, an associate professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, sees the inherent risk in technology that interacts with our physical space.
“Naturally that comes with security concerns. If robots in the future will be deployed in these places, they’re going to be exposed to actual human beings,” says Bao, who is also the assistant director of research at the Center for Cybersecurity and Trusted Foundations. “In specific scenarios where those humans are senior people, patients or kids, they’re more vulnerable.”
A hacker could exploit a robot to make it stop working, alter its behavior or even do something malicious to the humans around it. For some robots, like those used for military, communications or manufacturing tasks, a hacker-induced failure on the job could have costly national security repercussions.
Bao worked with a program called DARPA FIRE, which looked into vulnerabilities in military drones and unmanned and manned aviation vehicles and how those vulnerabilities could impact their tasks in the real world.
A sophisticated attacker can chain vulnerabilities together — they behave in a way where one plus one is greater than two.
Tiffany Bao
Assistant director of research in the Center for Cybersecurity and Trusted Foundations
AI has introduced another challenge by making it easier to discover numerous bugs in a system. These weak points could be used to hack robots as well as accounts, software providers or critical infrastructure.
