For years, the benefits of using technology has come with the threat of sophisticated hacking and attacks. However, developments are always underway to try to provide more protection from these potential problems. The recent development of a cybersecurity research team to create what is known as a “Canary Trap”, though, has been seen as a game-changer within the tech industry.
This “Canary Trap” system has been designed with the purpose of providing hackers with fake documentation. By using an AI system that can provide these “trap” documents, hackers can be quickly caught and found out. The new AI system has been developed to help ensure that fake documents are spread to help conceal a particular secret. These can be used to help work out where information leaks stem from, or even to help create distractions that can otherwise protect and disguise genuinely valuable details.
The data protection system is known as WE-FORGE and is being developed by the Department of Computer Science. This will be used to help utilise AI to make sure that anyone hacking in is provided with falsified details. The realism of these documents make them almost impossible to verify as false by hackers. They are close enough to real data to look real but filled with fake data that immediately shows the data to be incorrect.
Similar trap programs have been in use for many years, used to help deliver decoys that can give an attacker a false impression of success. However, WE-FORGE has taken this old-school approach and transformed it entirely for the better. Now, it can use natural language processing systems to generate fake content to be shared.
It might look authentic, but the data within is going to be false thus making it useless to hackers.
Why is a Canary Trap a worthwhile cybersecurity system?
For one, it can waste valuable time. Hackers spend huge sums of time and even money trying to find a way into the back-end. Believing they have done so they are then shown-up to be mistaken when the data is proven to be false. This wastes time and resources, but also harms their reputation within hacking circles as they are shown to be providing fake data to their ‘clients’.
This also removes the opportunity to even begin hacking. If someone who is keen to hack-in to a system knows there is a high likelihood they are wasting their time, it can act as a wonderful deterrent. By having databases with genuine information protected by this wall-like design. It means that hackers will be far less confident of finding anything they can legitimately work with.
For years, hacking has often left cybersecurity firms chasing the tail of the hackers. Now, a tool like this could offer an ideal buffer to stop any potential cybersecurity mistakes from happening.
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