EPFL EVENT 3.11.20: Cyber Threat & Technology Intelligence @EPFL SwissTech Center

Event_CYDCampus_CTI

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we switched to a hybrid mode, meaning that participants will also have the option to attend the conferences online at live.stcc.ch

Criminal hackers have a long history of sharing experiences, tools, and vulnerabilities; this has contributed to the success of major cyberattacks. The goal of this conference is to explore various measures to make cooperation, information sharing and collective intelligence also effective on the defender side.

As early as twenty years ago, the first Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) were established as a central resource for sharing information on cyber threats to critical infrastructure. In the same vein, threat intelligence platforms help organizations aggregate, correlate, and analyze threat data from multiple sources in (almost) real-time to support defensive actions. Open source solutions have also been proposed as a counterweight to «black-hat» hackers successfully working together, for instance the Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP) or the Open Threat Exchange (OTX), a crowd-sourced computer-security platform.

The Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) discipline, based on intelligence techniques and methods, aims to collect and filter all relevant information from the cyberspace, in order to draw up portraits of attackers, threats or technological trends (sectors of activity affected, methods used, etc.). CTI sources include open source intelligence, social media intelligence, human Intelligence, technical intelligence or intelligence from the deep and dark web. Thus, the tools used by large Security Operations Centers (SOCs), produce hundreds of millions of events per day, from endpoint and network alerts to log events, making it difficult to filter down to a manageable number of suspicious events for triage.

All in all, this profiling enables early detection of cyberattacks and better anticipation of cyber-risks. However, a proper threat intelligence approach should be complemented by technology intelligence, an activity that enables organizations to monitor and forecast the technological opportunities and threats that could affect the future growth and survival of their business. As emphasized by the National strategy for the protection of Switzerland against cyber risks (NCS, 2018-2022), an early identification of technological trends constitutes an important aspect for developing the Swiss cyber-defence. In that respect, the armasuisse CYD Campus cordially invites all stakeholders to bridge the gaps between academia, the industry, and governmental organizations working in the field of cyber-defence.

Registration Chair: Monia Khelifi

Program Chair: Dr. Alain Mermoud

Conference Fee: CHF 100.- one day, CHF 200.- both days, free of charge for students and government employees

Please note your will have to wear a mask except if you eat at a table (more information in the attached security concept).

More information and subscription: Armasuisse CYD Campus

Conférence sur la veille technologique et scientifique du 1er octobre 2020 à l’EPFL

Swissintell Event EPFL

Notre dernier événement consacré à la veille technologique dans les locaux du Cyber-Defence Campus à l’Innovation Park de l’EPFL fut un succès en cette période si particulière. Les mesures de l’OFSP et les mesures cantonales de lutte contre le coronavirus ayant été respectées, nous avons pu discuter des défis de la veille technologique appliquée aux domaines militaires et cyber.

La soirée a commencé par une introduction et une présentation du Cyber-Defence Campus par notre Président, le Dr. Alain Mermoud. Ensuite, il nous a proposé une démonstration de l’outil de veille technologique TMM (Technology & Market Monitoring) développé par armasuisse S+T.

Ensuite, Kilian Cuche a présenté les résultats de sa thèse de master consacrée à l’analyse des besoins en veille technologique des parties prenantes de la cyberdéfense fédérale. Un aperçu de sa présentation est disponible dans l’espace réservé aux membres de Swissintell.

Swissintell Event EPFL

Pour continuer, le Dr. Dimitri Percia David, nous a donné un aperçu de ses futurs travaux de recherche dans le cadre de son post-doc en collaboration avec l’UNIGE. Ses travaux se concentreront sur la détection de tendance technologique en scientifisant la courbe de Gartner ainsi que sur un algorithme de Ranking des technologies basé sur des méthodes d’intelligence artificielle.

Swissintell Event EPFL

Pour terminer, le Dr. Quentin Ladetto nous a présenté son programme de prospective technologique DEFTECH ainsi que ses différentes expérimentations d’utilisation de wargaming afin de prévoir des scénarios futuristes pour les forces armées. Les slides sont disponibles sur demande auprès de l’orateur.

Swissintell Event EPFL

La soirée s’est terminée de façon conviviale par des échanges et du réseautage autour d’un verre.

Contact Tracing: An Overview of Technologies and Cyber Risks

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global lockdown with severe health and economical consequences. As a result, authorities around the globe have expressed their needs for better tools to monitor the spread of the virus and to support human labor. Researchers and technology companies such as Google and Apple have offered to develop such tools in the form of contact tracing applications. The goal of these applications is to continuously track people’s proximity and to make the smartphone users aware if they have ever been in contact with positively diagnosed people, so that they could self-quarantine and possibly have an infection test.

A fundamental challenge with these smartphone-based contact tracing technologies is to ensure the security and privacy of their users. Moving from manual to smartphone-based contact tracing creates new cyber risks that could suddenly affect the entire population. Major risks include for example the abuse of the people’s private data by companies and/or authorities, or the spreading of wrong alerts by malicious users in order to force individuals to go into quarantine. In April 2020, the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) was announced with the goal to develop and evaluate secure solutions for European countries. However, after a while, several team members left this consortium and created DP-3T which has led to an international debate among the experts.

At this time, it is confusing for the non-expert to follow this debate; this report aims to shed light on the various proposed technologies by providing an objective assessment of the cybersecurity and privacy risks. We first review the state-of-the-art in digital contact tracing technologies and then explore the risk-utility trade-offs of the techniques proposed for COVID-19. We focus specifically on the technologies that are already adopted by certain countries.

Source : ArXiv