CyberAI

Destructive Cyber Operations and Machine Learning

Dakota Cary and Daniel Cebul
| November 2020

Machine learning may provide cyber attackers with the means to execute more effective and more destructive attacks against industrial control systems. As new ML tools are developed, CSET discusses the ways in which attackers may deploy these tools and the most effective avenues for industrial system defenders to respond.

Downscaling Attack and Defense

Andrew Lohn
| October 7, 2020

The resizing of images, which is typically a required part of preprocessing for computer vision systems, is vulnerable to attack. Images can be created such that the image is completely different at machine-vision scales than at other scales and the default settings for some common computer vision and machine learning systems are vulnerable.

One sentence summarizes the complexities of modern artificial intelligence: Machine learning systems use computing power to execute algorithms that learn from data. This AI triad of computing power, algorithms, and data offers a framework for decision-making in national security policy.

The U.S. Has AI Competition All Wrong

Foreign Affairs
| August 7, 2020

AI competition among nations comes down to a technical triad: data, algorithms and computing power. While the first two elements receive an enormous amount of policy attention, compute is often overlooked. CSET's Ben Buchanan explores its potential in Foreign Affairs.

The rise of deepfakes could enhance the effectiveness of disinformation efforts by states, political parties and adversarial actors. How rapidly is this technology advancing, and who in reality might adopt it for malicious ends? This report offers a comprehensive deepfake threat assessment grounded in the latest machine learning research on generative models.

AI will alter the nature of cybersecurity in unanticipated ways. CSET's CyberAI Director, Ben Buchanan, wrote a research agenda for understanding these changes, including “how AI & machine learning can be used to detect malicious code.”

CyberLaw Podcast: Whaling at Scale

Steptoe & Johnson
| June 8, 2020

"Does machine learning get offensive actors anything they don't already have?" asks Ben Buchanan, Director of CSET's CyberAI program. He joined the CyberLaw podcast to discuss the impacts of AI on offensive and defensive cyber operations.

Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, reviews CSET Senior Faculty Fellow Ben Buchanan's latest book, which highlights the landscape of subtle but persistent cyber attacks that are changing statecraft.

CSET's CyberAI project released an issue brief, "A National Security Research Agenda for Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence," to chart the path for national security policymakers in cybersecurity and AI.

"Technology is fundamental to cyber operations on offense and defense," said CSET's Ben Buchanan on the question of AI and cybersecurity. "The reason why AI is important is that there’s just so much data that you need a machine to be able to do the first pass through the data [during offensive and defensive operations]."