Dr. Guofei Gu, associate professor and director of the Secure Communication and Computer Systems (SUCCESS) lab at Texas A&M, has developed techniques to automatically uncover unknown vulnerabilities in existing software so that defenders can detect the problems ahead of cyber attackers. This technique has identified more than two dozen serious vulnerabilities in widely used software from vendors such as Google, Adobe and Microsoft.
“Most current cybersecurity solutions are passive and reactive, focusing on known attacks,” Gu said. “The situation is becoming worse because the economic engine of profit-driven cyberattacks is quickly transforming the threat and defense landscape to favor more on attackers, as they enjoy many fundamental advantages over defenders.”
To combat this issue, Gu and his team developed PeerPress, a prototype system with new analysis techniques that automatically extract intrinsic and harmful behaviors from malware, and then use them for active, robust and scalable malware detection.