ITR/SI: Guarding the Next Internet Frontier: Countering Denial of Information

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

As applications enabled by the Internet become information rich, ensuring access to quality information in the presence of potentially malicious entities will be a major challenge. The goal of this research project is to develop defensive techniques to counter denial-of-information (DoI) attacks. Such attacks attempt to confuse an information system by deliberately introducing noise that appears to be useful information. The mere availability of information is insufficient if the user must find a needle in a haystack of noise that is created by an adversary to hide critical information. The research focuses on the characterization of information quality metrics that are relevant in the presence of DoI attacks. In particular, two complementary metrics are explored. Information regularity captures predictability in the patterns of information creation and access. The second metric, information quality trust, captures the known ability of an information source to meet the needs of its clients. The development of techniques to derive the values of these metrics for information sources is a key goal of the research. Other planned research activities include the building of a distributed information infrastructure and experimental evaluation of defensive techniques against DoI attacks.