Arms Race in Adversarial Malware Detection: A Survey

Malicious software (malware) is a major cyber threat that has to be tackled with Machine Learning (ML) techniques because millions of new malware examples are injected into cyberspace on a daily basis. However, ML is vulnerable to attacks known as adversarial examples. In this article, we survey and systematize the field of Adversarial Malware Detection (AMD) through the lens of a unified conceptual framework of assumptions, attacks, defenses, and security properties. This not only leads us to map attacks and defenses to partial order structures, but also allows us to clearly describe the attack-defense arms race in the AMD context. We draw a number of insights, including: knowing the defender’s feature set is critical to the success of transfer attacks; the effectiveness of practical evasion attacks largely depends on the attacker’s freedom in conducting manipulations in the problem space; knowing the attacker’s manipulation set is critical to the defender’s success; and the effectiveness of adversarial training depends on the defender’s capability in identifying the most powerful attack. We also discuss a number of future research directions.

Microbial defenses against mobile genetic elements and viruses: Who defends whom from what?

Prokaryotes have numerous mobile genetic elements (MGEs) that mediate horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between cells. These elements can be costly, even deadly, and cells use numerous defense systems to filter, control, or inactivate them. Recent studies have shown that prophages, conjugative elements, their parasites (phage satellites and mobilizable elements), and other poorly described MGEs encode defense systems homologous to those of bacteria. These constitute a significant fraction of the repertoire of cellular defense genes. As components of MGEs, these defense systems have presumably evolved to provide them, not the cell, adaptive functions. While the interests of the host and MGEs are aligned when they face a common threat such as an infection by a virulent phage, defensive functions carried by MGEs might also play more selfish roles to fend off other antagonistic MGEs or to ensure their maintenance in the cell. MGEs are eventually lost from the surviving host genomes by mutational processes and their defense systems can be co-opted when they provide an advantage to the cell. The abundance of defense systems in MGEs thus sheds new light on the role, effect, and fate of the so-called “cellular defense systems,” whereby they are not only merely microbial defensive weapons in a 2-partner arms race, but also tools of intragenomic conflict between multiple genetic elements with divergent interests that shape cell fate and gene flow at the population level.

Genomic and Phenotypic Characterization of Experimentally Selected Resistant Leishmania donovani Reveals a Role for Dynamin-1-Like Protein in the Mechanism of Resistance to a Novel Antileishmanial Compound

Humans and their pathogens are continuously locked in a molecular arms race during which the eventual emergence of pathogen drug resistance (DR) seems inevitable. For neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), DR is generally studied retrospectively once it has already been established in clinical settings.

LAPped in Proof: LC3‐Associated Phagocytosis and the Arms Race Against Bacterial Pathogens

Cells of the innate immune system continuously patrol the extracellular environment for potential microbial threats that are to be neutralized by phagocytosis and delivery to lysosomes. In addition, phagocytes employ autophagy as an innate immune mechanism against pathogens that succeed to escape the phagolysosomal pathway and invade the cytosol. In recent years, LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP) has emerged as an intermediate between phagocytosis and autophagy. During LAP, phagocytes target extracellular microbes while using parts of the autophagic machinery to label the cargo-containing phagosomes for lysosomal degradation. LAP contributes greatly to host immunity against a multitude of bacterial pathogens. In the pursuit of survival, bacteria have developed elaborate strategies to disarm or circumvent the LAP process. In this review, we will outline the nature of the LAP mechanism and discuss recent insights into its interplay with bacterial pathogens.

Rohingya to Myanmar Military Coup: International Efforts in Respond to Humanitarian Violations and Myanmar’s Democracy Deprivation

Myanmar is currently faced with conflicts mainly considered as crimes against humanity that require resolution sooner or later. The conflict in Myanmar is closely linked to ethnicity, creating a cycle of violence that continues to escalate without any possibility of diminishing. The inability of the state to address ethnic minority grievances or provide adequate security to communities has created a literal arms race among minority groups. More action needs to be taken to finally resolve the situation and crisis unfolding in Myanmar, and that is where countries in Southeast Asia play a very important role for conflict resolution. This research was carried out using qualitative method with descriptive analysis regarding to the situation that occurred in Myanmar, especially regarding the Rohingya crisis and the Myanmar Military Coup which was the focus of the research. The escalation of the humanitarian conflict and the deprivation of democracy by the Myanmar people, requires joint handling in order to avoid further expansion of the conflict. In this case, neighboring countries such as Indonesia have an important role as a driver of mediation in regional forums to resolve conflicts in Myanmar. ASEAN, as a diplomatic platform in the Southeast Asian region, must be put forward and reach a consensus for finally intervening in the Myanmar conflict, which is taking more and more lives. The United Nations with the principle of responsibility to protect can also play a role in overcoming the conflict, considering that the conflict has resulted in crimes against humanity that cannot be tolerated.

AUKUS Pact in the Perspective of Security Dilemma

Indo-Pacific is one of strategic region with complex political interest because of huge area and many involved country including major countries such as China and United States. The increase of China’s power in the region caused security dilemma for other countries. United States is one of major power that feels threatened with the rise of China. United States have a lot of cooperation with other major countries and the newest one is trilateral cooperation with Australia and United Kingdom in AUKUS Pact. AUKUS Pact caused a different reaction from countries in Indo-Pacific region. In the perspective of security dilemma, AUKUS Pact is one of United States’s security dilemma because of the rise of China. The AUKUS Pact point is help Australia to have a nuclear submarines. AUKUS Pact is not an arms race but at some point AUKUS Pact can escalated arms race in Indo-Pacific region.