Victor Raskin, NLP for IAS: Overview and Implementations

This paper explores a promising interface between natural language processing (NLP) and information assurance and security (IAS). More specifically, it is devoted to possible applications of the accumulated considerable resources in NLP to IAS. The paper is of a mixed theoretical and empirical nature. Of the four possible venues of applications, (i) memorizing randomly generated passwords with the help of automatically generated funny jingles, (ii) natural language watermarking, (iii) using the available machine translation (MT) systems for (additional) encryption of text messages, and (iv) downgrading, or sanitizing, classified information in networks, two venues, (i) and (iv), have been at least partially implemented, and the remaining two, (ii) and (iii), are being implemented to the proof-of-concept level. We feel that it is important, however, even at this early stage, to review for the information security community what NLP can do for it and to invite feedback and further efforts and ideas in this direction. About the speaker: Victor Raskin founded the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at Purdue and chaired it in 1979-99. He also founded the Natural Language Processing (NLP) Laboratory at Purdue in 1986 and has coordinated it ever since. He is the author of 16 books and close to 200 articles on natural language processing (computational linguistics), linguistic and semantic theory, philosophy of language and science, and various applications of linguistics and computational linguistics to adjacent areas, including to information security. Together with Sergei Nirenburg, Director, Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University, he has developed a ground-breaking ontological semantic approach to NLP that, for the first time, provides near-comprehensive semantic capabilities to NLP systems and thus ensures their accuracy. He has been a PI, co-PI, and PI-level consultant for a large number of NLP research grants since 1966 in his native Russia, Israel, and this country, most recently on the interface of NLP and information security. Professor Raskin has served on the CERIAS Internal Advisory Board since its inception. The presentation is based on joint research with Mikhail J. Atallah, Craig J. McDonough, and Sergei Nirenburg