AI Security Threats against Pervasive Robotic Systems: A Course for Next Generation Cybersecurity Workforce
This work tackles the shortage of skilled professionals to secure AI-driven robotic systems, which is critical for safety in human-proximity applications, but it is incremental as it focuses on curriculum development rather than new technical solutions.
The paper addresses the growing security threats to pervasive robotic systems that use AI, proposing a curriculum to train cybersecurity professionals to defend against attacks that could cause privacy invasion, sabotage, or bodily harm. It describes a course with seven modules covering topics like attack surfaces, penetration testing, and security strategies for sensors, training, inference, and actuators.
Robotics, automation, and related Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have become pervasive bringing in concerns related to security, safety, accuracy, and trust. With growing dependency on physical robots that work in close proximity to humans, the security of these systems is becoming increasingly important to prevent cyber-attacks that could lead to privacy invasion, critical operations sabotage, and bodily harm. The current shortfall of professionals who can defend such systems demands development and integration of such a curriculum. This course description includes details about seven self-contained and adaptive modules on "AI security threats against pervasive robotic systems". Topics include: 1) Introduction, examples of attacks, and motivation; 2) - Robotic AI attack surfaces and penetration testing; 3) - Attack patterns and security strategies for input sensors; 4) - Training attacks and associated security strategies; 5) - Inference attacks and associated security strategies; 6) - Actuator attacks and associated security strategies; and 7) - Ethics of AI, robotics, and cybersecurity.