Paper Info
Title
Molecular Barcoding As A Defense Against Benchtop Biochemical Attacks On Dna Fingerprinting And Information Forensics
Abstract
DNA fingerprinting can offer remarkable benefits, especially for point-of-care diagnostics, information forensics, and analysis. However, the pressure to drive down costs is likely to lead to cheap untrusted solutions and a multitude of unprecedented risks. These risks will especially emerge at the frontier between the cyberspace and DNA biology. To address these risks, we perform a forensic-security assessment of a typical DNA-fingerprinting flow. We demonstrate, for the first time, benchtop analysis of biochemical-level vulnerabilities in flows that are based on a standard quantification assay known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR). After identifying potential vulnerabilities, we realize attacks using benchtop techniques to demonstrate their catastrophic impact on the outcome of the DNA fingerprinting. We also propose a countermeasure, in which DNA samples are each uniquely barcoded (using synthesized DNA molecules) in advance of PCR analysis, thus demonstrating the feasibility of our approach using benchtop techniques. We discuss how molecular barcoding could be utilized within a cyber-biological framework to improve DNA-fingerprinting security against a wide range of threats, including sample forgery. We also present a security analysis of the DNA barcoding mechanism from a molecular biology perspective.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1109/TIFS.2020.2994742
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY
Keywords
DocType
Volume
DNA, Forensics, Security, Bioinformatics, Genomics, Authentication, barcodes, biotechnology, cyber-physical systems (CPS), encryption, forensics, genetics, security
Journal
15
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1556-6013
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mohamed Ibrahim145335.03
Tung-Che Liang2105.67
Kristin Scott3151.78
K Chakrabarty48173636.14
Ramesh Karri52968224.90