State-of-the-art monitoring platforms fail to detect malicious attacks, such as in 2022 when attackers stole about $2 million worth of cryptocurrency from users of the Korean crypto exchange KLAYswap. The hackers exploited vulnerabilities in the Internet’s routing ecosystem and web authentication certificates.

Mittal, professor of electrical and computer engineering, proposes building a novel network monitoring framework, Layer7, to detect and mitigate malicious attacks. In his IP Accelerator proposal, he noted that of all the network and security monitoring options available, “none address the fundamental threat of monitoring all networked dependencies invoked by external software and cloud-based hosting.”

Layer7 is a network service monitoring tool that identifies potential attacks on a website and all its dependencies and connections. The system can alert network operators with immediately actionable information and even trigger automatic mitigation maneuvers.

The IP Accelerator funds will be used in several ways, including testing against a range of potential network attacks, fine-tuning the system’s ability to identify false positives and false negatives, and working to assure system reliability and scaling use of the tool.

The IP Accelerator program gives researchers up to $100,000 each to conduct studies to demonstrate that their discoveries can meet a societal need. This support can help advance technologies to the point where they can attract investment from and licensing by a startup or existing company, enabling them to make a meaningful real-world impact.

“Princeton researchers continue to solve societal challenges across many sectors including health and medicine, energy and the environment, agriculture and many others,” said John Ritter, executive director of Princeton’s Office of Technology Licensing and New Ventures(Link is external). “Through these grants, Princeton University helps to advance these curiosity-based research discoveries into developments that will form the foundation of tomorrow’s life-changing technologies and services.”

The IP Accelerator Fund is one of several seed funding programs administered by the Office of the Dean for Research. The University awarded funds to four projects in total this year.