Cyber and Information Warfare
Research and development to identify and address the threats to Australia’s defence and national security presented by information and communications technology dependencies and vulnerabilities.
UWA has world-leading expertise in conducting research on human information processing and transmission, the mechanisms of social influence, and, more broadly, culture and its evolution. This helps agencies identify false information, conspiracy theories, and online radicalisation, anticipate its spread and impact, and develop strategies to counteract malign informational influence.
Capabilities and UWA Competitive Advantage
- Researchers from multi-disciplinary teams including psychology, human factors, social and behavioural science, economics, computer science, and cybersecurity.
- Research toward secure, assured and resilient information systems as relied on by Defence, including; Moving Target Defence, Network modelling and analysis, anomaly detection and malware analysis.
- Using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to improve the detection and mitigation of misinformation and fraud.
- Experimental and computational simulations to precisely determine the effects of misinformation on cognition and behaviour.
- Design of pre-bunking and de-bunking interventions to reduce the impact and spread of misinformation.
- Predicting the outcomes of collective human behaviour (e.g., information transmission and transformation).
- Research into human culture, cultural evolution, and culture change including communication, social influence and misinformation management in social media).
- Software-induced hardware faults that hinder physical operations and defence techniques against such attacks
- Privacy-preserving techniques and protocols for sensor networks
- Exploiting quantum-inspired machine learning to develop advanced cybersecurity mechanisms
- Formal verification of AI-driven solutions improved security and robustness
- Game Theory with AI
Key contact
Cybersecurity
Dr Jin Hong
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
Email: jin.hong@uwa.edu.au
Information Warfare
Associate Professor Nicolas Fay
School of Psychological Science
Phone: +61 8 6488 2688
Email: nicolas.fay@uwa.edu.au
Outcomes and Impact
- Misinformation impacts on cognition and behaviour and mitigation strategies including effectively debunking misinformation, reducing misconceptions, and better preparing people for future misinformation.
- Fostering information and media literacy, critical thinking.
- A Non-Kinetic Misinformation Wargame that models operations in the information environment and can provide scenario-based training for defence on the online dynamics of social disinformation.
