Intrinsic Cognitive Security (ICS)
Abstract
The Intrinsic Cognitive Security (ICS) program, building on technologies developed in the Pipelined Reasoning of Verifiers Enabling Robust Systems (PROVERS) program (PE 0601101E, Project CCS-02), will extend computational formal methods with cognitive guarantees and models to protect mixed reality users from cognitive attack. Mixed reality (MR) integrates virtual and real worlds in real time and will be ubiquitous in future military missions, including missions involving dismounted soldiers. Currently, users of MR systems are vulnerable to a wide variety of adversary attacks that exploit the intimate connection between users and MR equipment. Formal methods are rigorous, mathematics-based approaches to provide guarantees about computer-based systems, for example, to guarantee the absence of exploitable weaknesses. Cognitive models represent aspects of human perception, action, memory, and reasoning. The ICS program will extend formal methods by explicitly creating and analyzing cognitive models as part of MR system development to protect the user from adversary attacks. To accomplish this task, ICS will create cognitive guarantees that address mixed reality vulnerabilities and are expressed in languages suitable for proofs from models; build cognitive models for reasoning about users of mixed reality systems with sufficient fidelity relative to human behaviors; and evaluate model, proof, and guarantee validity using automated reasoning tools and prototype implementations of proved guarantees. The cognitive protections to be developed under ICS are needed to prevent exploitation of MR systems by adversaries.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2025
- Source ID
- aa5ee1bf583b599c86a2537951c376a9