Recently, Ant Group announced the establishment of the Tianxiang Security Laboratory and organized the first expert seminar. The laboratory will focus on the security of digital infrastructure behind new technologies and scenarios such as large models and Web3, and will focus on talent development, scenario empowerment, open ecology, and the integration of industry, academia, and research in technology. At the same time, the laboratory has set up an expert advisory committee, with 7 experts from universities such as the University of Electronic Science and Technology and Huazhong University of Science and Technology serving as members.
Li Junkui, Vice President of Ant Group and President of the Department of Security Technology, stated at the seminar that the development and integration of digital technologies such as AGI and Web3 have brought new application scenarios and lifestyles, and have brought unlimited imagination to industrial digitalization. How to safeguard the security of new technologies and new scenarios that rely heavily on data elements and basic software is a problem we must face. Security must run ahead of business development, strengthen the strong guarantee of developing new quality productivity by using technology prevention means before black and gray industries infiltrate.
Wang Jiashui, Director of Ant Tianxiang Security Laboratory, introduced that the Tianxiang Security Laboratory will focus on the exploration of next-generation infrastructure security, building a leading research system and automated security solutions in the field of large models and Web3 infrastructure security. In the direction of large model infrastructure security, the focus is on the security of the large model supply chain, including issues related to third-party libraries, plugins, frameworks involved in the complete life cycle of model training, fine-tuning, deployment, and operation; in the direction of Web3 infrastructure security, work is carried out around chain platform security, contract security, on-chain offense and defense, and C-end offense and defense.
Zhang Xiaosong, Dean of the College of Cybersecurity at the University of Electronic Science and Technology and Academic Advisor to the Ant Tianxiang Security Laboratory, fully affirmed the direction of this cross-border collaboration between industry, academia, and research, and pointed out that the country attaches great importance to the legal protection of data circulation elements. Faced with the eternal nature of the cyber security game and the constantly escalating threat landscape, the industry and academia need to explore multidimensional technical cooperation, turn challenges into opportunities, focus on the original intention of information confidentiality, integrity, availability, and verifiability, use AI technology to empower security, strengthen vulnerability discovery, sample analysis, tracking and tracing, and countermeasure technology in proactive network security models, and achieve the systematized upgrading of adversarial defense capabilities with “using AI to guard AI, using AI to fight against AI.”
Zheng Zibin, Deputy Dean of the School of Software Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University and Academic Advisor to the Ant Tianxiang Security Laboratory, stated that security is the cornerstone of Web3 development. With the continuous progress and development of blockchain technology, the future security of Web3 will pay more attention to the construction of comprehensive defense mechanisms, from the efficient and stable underlying system architecture, secure audit of smart contracts, to the full-chain monitoring of transaction behavior, ensuring the stability and security of the system from the bottom up. Enterprises and regulators need to fully leverage their respective technical experience and advantages in their fields to jointly create a more secure and transparent Web3 era.
Universities are the convergence of education, technology, and talent. The Tianxiang Security Laboratory has set up an expert committee, inviting experts and scholars from multiple universities such as the University of Electronic Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University to participate in the laboratory construction, explore next-generation digital infrastructure security technology, and form a joint force in technology directions such as web3 security and large-scale model infrastructure security to promote the integration of industry, academia, and research.
