A New Tool For Protecting ML Systems Security

Uploaded on 2023-03-13 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, TECHNOLOGY--Developments, FREE TO VIEW

Microsoft and Mitre have recently developed a plug-in that combines a number of open-source software tools to help protect Machine Learning (ML) systems from cyber attacks. Named Arsenal, the tool is a plugin for the MITRE Adversarial Threat Landscape for Artificial-Intelligence Systems (ATLAS) framework, a knowledge base of adversarial tactics, techniques, and case studies.

MITRE is a non-profit implementer of US federally funded research and development centers. It typically works to address US government and wider cyber security industry concerns.

The collaboration with Microsoft on Arsenal is just one example of MITRE’s efforts to develop a family of tools addressing issues including trust, transparency, and fairness to better enable use of ML and AI systems for mission-critical applications in areas ranging from healthcare to national security. Microsoft. say that “AI and machine learning may embody the most consequential technology advances of our lifetime, bringing huge opportunities to build, discover, and create a better world.”

The aim is for security practitioners to use Arsenal, which has been jointly derived from Microsoft’s Counterfeit, (an open-source tool to help developers assess the security of their machine learning systems) as an automated adversarial attack library to simulate attacks on ML systems, even if they lack a background in ML or AI.

Arsenal helps cyber security researchers store and create adversarial tactics, techniques and procedures defined to interface with MITRE's Caldera cyber security platform for running AI security risk assessments as an automated adversarial attack library.

The integration of Arsenal into Caldera is expected to help researchers identify novel vulnerabilities in the building blocks of ML workflows and produce protective measures to prevent exploitation of ML systems.

Arsenal includes a limited number of adversary profiles, based on publicly available information and Microsoft and MITRE plan to add new techniques and adversary profiles as researchers document new attacks on ML systems. Right now, Arsenal can be used on systems running Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04 and requires Python versions 3.7 or higher to work. The tool currently includes a limited number of adversary profiles based on publicly available information.

As security researchers document new attacks on ML systems, Microsoft and MITRE plan to continually evolve the tools to add new techniques and adversary profiles. “As the world looks to AI to positively change how organisations operate, it’s critical that steps are taken to help ensure the security of those AI and machine learning models that will empower the workforce to do more with less of a strain on time, budget and resources,” Microsoft program manager Ram Shankar said.

In addition to its Mitre collaboration, Microsoft has also worked with machine learning repository company Hugging Face on building an AI security scanner. “The reason we invest in research, tools and industry partnerships like those we’re announcing today is so we can understand the nature of what those attacks would entail, do our best to get ahead of them, and help others in the security community do the same... There is still so much to learn about AI, and we are continuously investing across our platforms and in red-team like research to learn about this technology and to help inform how it will be integrated into our platform and products,” says Microsoft.

The collaboration with Microsoft on Arsenal is one example of MITRE’s efforts to develop a family of tools addressing issues including trust, transparency, and fairness to better enable use of ML and AI systems for mission-critical applications in areas ranging from healthcare to national security.

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