After cybersecurity lab wouldn’t use AV software, US accuses Georgia Tech of fraud

Enlarge (credit: Georgia Tech)

Dr. Emmanouil "Manos" Antonakakis runs a Georgia Tech cybersecurity lab and has attracted millions of dollars in the last few years from the US government for Department of Defense research projects like "Rhamnousia: Attributing Cyber Actors Through Tensor Decomposition and Novel Data Acquisition."

The government yesterday sued Georgia Tech in federal court, singling out Antonakakis and claiming that neither he nor Georgia Tech followed basic (and required) security protocols for years, knew they were not in compliance with such protocols, and then submitted invoices for their DoD projects anyway. (Read the complaint.) The government claims this is fraud:

At bottom, DoD paid for military technology that Defendants stored in an environment that was not secure from unauthorized disclosure, and Defendants failed to even monitor for breaches so that they and DoD could be alerted if information was compromised. What DoD received for its funds was of diminished or no value, not the benefit of its bargain.

AV hate

Given the nature of his work for DoD, Antonakakis and his lab are required to abide by many sets of security rules, including those outlined in NIST Special Publication 800–171, "Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Information Systems and Organizations."