Neural network vaccinations protect against hacking

A programming technique that works on the same principle as disease-preventing vaccinations could safeguard machine learning systems from malicious cyber-attacks. The technique was developed by the digital specialist arm of Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO, and presented recently at an international conference on machine learning, held in Long Beach, California, US. Machine learning systems, or neural networks, are becoming increasingly prevalent in modern society, where they are pressed into service across a wide range of areas, including traffic management, medical diagnosis, and agriculture. They are also critical components in autonomous vehicles. They operate from an initial training phase, in which they are fed tens of thousands of possible iterations of a given task.