Researchers at ETH Zurich have formalized models of the EMV payment protocol using the Tamarin model checker. They discovered flaws allowing attackers to bypass PIN requirements for high-value purchases on EMV cards like Mastercard and Visa. The team also collaborated with an EMV consortium member to verify the improved EMV Kernel C-8 protocol. Why it matters: This research highlights the importance of formal methods in identifying critical vulnerabilities in widely used payment systems, potentially impacting financial security for consumers in the GCC region and worldwide.
Cristofaro Mune and Niek Timmers presented a seminar on bypassing unbreakable crypto using fault injection on Espressif ESP32 chips. The presentation detailed how the hardware-based Encrypted Secure Boot implementation of the ESP32 SoC was bypassed using a single EM glitch, without knowing the decryption key. This attack exploited multiple hardware vulnerabilities, enabling arbitrary code execution and extraction of plain-text data from external flash. Why it matters: The research highlights critical security vulnerabilities in embedded systems and the potential for fault injection attacks to bypass secure boot mechanisms, necessitating stronger hardware-level security measures.
A new paper from MBZUAI demonstrates that state-of-the-art speech models can be easily jailbroken using audio perturbations to generate harmful content, achieving success rates of 76-93% on models like Qwen2-Audio and LLaMA-Omni. The researchers adapted projected gradient descent (PGD) to the audio domain to optimize waveforms that push the model towards harmful responses. They propose a defense mechanism based on post-hoc activation patching that hardens models at inference time without retraining. Why it matters: This research highlights a critical vulnerability in speech-based LLMs and offers a practical solution, contributing to the development of more secure and trustworthy AI systems in the region and globally.
MBZUAI researchers Nils Lukas and Toluwani Samuel Aremu will present a paper at ICML 2025 demonstrating the vulnerability of current watermarking techniques in LLMs. Their research shows that adaptive paraphrasers can evade detection from watermarks with negligible impact on text quality, costing less than $10 of GPU compute. The attack involves fine-tuning a small open-weight model to rewrite sentences until surrogate keys no longer trigger detection. Why it matters: This work highlights critical weaknesses in current AI provenance methods, suggesting the need for more robust watermarking techniques to maintain trust in the authenticity of AI-generated content.
KAUST researchers have designed an integrated circuit logic lock to protect electronic devices from cyberattacks. The protective logic locks are based on spintronics and can be incorporated into electronic chips. The lock uses a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) where the keys are stored in tamper-proof memory, ensuring hardware security. Why it matters: This hardware-based security feature could significantly increase confidence in globalized integrated circuit manufacturing, protecting against counterfeiting and malicious modifications.
The paper examines the performance of pre-trained Arabic language models on Arabic text intentionally stripped of diacritical dots to evade content classification. It proposes methods to support these "undotted" texts without retraining the models. The proposed methods achieve nearly perfect performance on one downstream task. Why it matters: The research highlights a vulnerability in Arabic NLP and offers solutions to maintain performance in the face of adversarial text manipulation.
TII's Secure Systems Research Center (SSRC) has joined Dronecode, a Linux Foundation non-profit, to enhance UAV security. SSRC will contribute to Dronecode's Security SIG, focusing on cryptography, memory protection, and code analysis for the Pixhawk autopilot hardware and PX4 software. SSRC aims to develop and share security and resilience capabilities for the open UAV platform. Why it matters: This partnership enhances the security of drone systems, addressing potential privacy, cybersecurity, and safety threats in line with the UAE's focus on secure autonomous systems.