This season’s final Maritime Cyber Security Centre Research Seminar will be conducted via MS Teams on 18 June at 13:00-15:00 (see the link below). Ömer Melih Gül, PhD, Associate Professor at Istanbul Technical University, will be presenting on the topic of “AI/ML based RF Fingerprinting for spoofing attacks and AI/ML based Maritime Security for AIS data spoofing attacks.”
Introductory remarks by the speaker
Industrial IoT-enabled critical infrastructures are susceptible to cyber-attacks due to their mission-critical deployment. To ensure security by design, radio frequency (RF)-based security is considered an effective way for wirelessly monitored or actuated critical infrastructures to analyze unique transmitter fingerprints and determine the legitimacy of a user device or transmitter. An RF fingerprinting model is susceptible to various channel and environmental conditions that impact the learning performance of a machine/deep learning model. As data gathering cannot always be considered a feasible alternative, efficient solutions that can tackle the impact of varying propagation channels on learning performance are emergent. We aim to shed light on the RF fingerprinting problem from a different angle when 4G, 5G, and WiFi data samples are collected from different transmitters by proposing a fine-grained augmentation approach to improve the learning performance of a deep learning model with an enhanced classifier structure. We also present a sensitivity analysis of the fine-grained approach concerning different signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), signal-to-interference-ratio (SIR) levels, and signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) levels to exhibit the resiliency of the fine-grained augmentation approach against interference and noise. We will also talk about a new threat emerging in global maritime domain, AIS spoofing. This deceptive shipping practice involves tampering with the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which is used to broadcast vessel position, providers identity, and other critical information to nearby vessels and maritime authorities, initially used for collision avoidance. As AIS spoofing incidents rise, it has severe implications for shipping, national security, safety of life, and global trade. We will present several recent approaches including AI/ML based solutions for the problems of AIS data spoofing attacks.
Short resume
Ömer Melih Gül (SIEEE’17, MIEEE’21, SMIEEE’24) received BSc., MSc., and PhD. degrees from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Türkiye, in 2012, 2014, and 2020, respectively by also working as a research assistant at the same department. His research interests include AI/machine learning applications, wireless security, networking, scheduling, IoT, UAV, robotics, and blockchain. He has co-authored over 50 papers and 4 book chapters. He was awarded third place in the 2019 Lance Stafford Larson Outstanding Student Paper Award by the IEEE Computer Society. He was also awarded third place in the poster competition at 2021 IEEE Rising Stars Global Conference. In 2022, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a recipient of the best paper award at 48th Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) in 2022. In 2023, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Türkiye, where he supervised 4 MSc theses and co- supervised 1 thesis. Since March 2024, he has been working as an associate professor in the Informatics Institute at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul, Türkiye, where he is supervising 1 PhD and 4 MSc students.
He serves as an Associate Editor in IEEE Open Journal of Computer Society, (Elsevier) Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, (Springer) Telecommunication Systems, Wireless Networks, Cluster Computing and also the International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence. As cochair, he organized CIEAI workshop at IEEE Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC) 2023 in Estonia. Moreover, he became the Publicity Chair in the IEEE iThings 2024. He organized two editions of EAI International Conference on Robotic Sensor Networks (ROSENET 2023, ROSENET 2024) as general chair.
On the IEEE volunteering side, he started volunteering as the chair of IEEE Türkiye Young Professionals Affinity Group in 2020-2021 when IEEE Turkey YP team was awarded the 2021 IEEE Region 8 (EMEA Region) Outstanding Affinity Group Award in 2021and Honorable Mention in IEEE Young Professionals Hall of Fame Award in 2022. After then, he held several prestigious IEEE volunteer roles including Vice-Chair of Student&Young Professionals Committee, Region 8 (EMEA) Coordinator, Member-at-Large at MGA Board of the IEEE Computer Society. Since January 2024, he has been Vice-Chair of the Geographic Activities Committee at the IEEE Computer Society. Individually, he was awarded the 2022 IEEE MGA Young Professionals Achievement Award by IEEE MGA. In addition, he was awarded the Outstanding Contribution Certificate in 2021 and the Continuous Service Certificate in 2024 by the IEEE Computer Society.