IRIS: Moldova's new anti-hacker tool built by UTM students
The Republic of Moldova is taking another step towards ensuring its cybersecurity by launching the IRIS platform, a strategic digital protection project, on July 6. The new technology, developed by students at the Technical University of Moldova (UTM), is designed to identify and block security breaches in critical infrastructure institutions and government services.
The launch of the new platform comes as a direct response to the major test during last year's elections, when the Republic of Moldova was targeted by a cyberattack, with approximately 14 million incidents recorded. Beyond the effective protection of the systems at the time, the state now has a unique tool designed to ensure the country's resilience against hybrid warfare.
"IRIS is the platform that will defend us from these cyber interferences, taking into account the fact that the number of digital public services has increased in the Republic of Moldova, making them more accessible to the population, but at the same time more exposed to risks", said Adrian Manole, cybersecurity engineer at the CyberCore Research Center.
With the digitalization of public services, the attack surface has increased significantly. For this reason, the Information Security Students' Association within the Faculty of Computers, Informatics and Microelectronics at UTM developed IRIS to ensure end-to-end protection for state institutions.
“It is very important to note that our platform was built from the ground up to be integrated into all segments. Attackers want to destabilize our daily lives. They analyze everything, including our vulnerabilities. Moreover, they are already using artificial intelligence-based tools to increase the degree of penetration into the systems of our institutions”, explained Adrian Manole.
In this scenario, the IRIS platform's primary mission is to eliminate breaches and secure companies and public services.
“IRIS uses artificial intelligence and thinks exactly like an attacker. It collects and analyzes data from an institution from all possible angles, providing the answer to an essential question: how secure is that institution, what cyber attacks could target it and how can it be effectively defended in the future”, added the CyberCore engineer.
The platform has been in development for about a year and is designed to be used by both organizations with IT infrastructures and institutions and companies that manage complex and extensive systems.
In the initial stage, the platform will be implemented and tested in collaboration with partner institutions, agencies and companies. Later, a version accessible to the general public is planned, said Ștefan Bâstrițchi, vice president of the Information Security Students' Association.
“*Given the fact that it is a platform that also combines artificial intelligence, it can be used from small sites or assets to very large infrastructure. Artificial intelligence is used only to give meaning and help, to be like an assistant for the automations and infrastructure that we have created, " Bâstrițchi pointed out.
The Technical University of Moldova will be the first beneficiary of this platform, according to the institution's rector, Viorel Bostan.
*"We welcomed and told this initiative group that we are ready to discuss, to support them. We are going to see exactly the areas in which we will work together and establish a partnership framework with this platform," said Bostan.
According to a study conducted by Microsoft, the Republic of Moldova occupies the 60th position worldwide in terms of active use of artificial intelligence, surpassing neighboring states such as Romania (64th place), Ukraine (117th place), Belarus (114th place) and the Russian Federation (116th place).
With this score, our country is better positioned in the global ranking and in relation to countries such as Azerbaijan, India, Turkey, China, Kazakhstan or Egypt.
