Amazing stuff! In the future, hopefully AI will play the role of the red team in this iterative process to improve the encryption etc.!
"... a team ... researchers present a new approach to genetically securing precious biological material. They created a genetic combination lock in which the locking or encryption process scrambled the DNA of a cell so that its important instructions were non-functional and couldn't be easily read or used. ..."
From the abstract:
"The protection of high-value cell lines (assets) relies on physical security by limiting access to samples. We present a cybersecurity-inspired platform that protects biological assets at the genetic level. This technology uses a permutation lock design where an asset can only be decrypted using an authentication code r from a search space composed of n objects on a defined keypad.
Here, the genetic asset is designed as a scrambled DNA sequence, and the code is a temporal pattern of small molecules that regulate sets of recombinases that can unscramble a DNA sequence into the desired final sequence.
In this work, a “blue team” designed and built an encrypted (scrambled) DNA sequence, and a “red team” sought to break the code through an ethical hacking exercise. Two iterations of testing revealed a 0.2% (2 in 990) chance of gaining access to the asset by random search, which is on par with the theoretical goal of 0.1% (1 in 990).
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Protecting cells at the genetic level and simulating unauthorized access via a biohackathon (open access)
Fig. 1. Biological security scenario “biohackathon” for designing, building, testing, and learning.
Fig. 2. Illustration of biological (genetic) asset encryption to decryption and nPr object engineering.
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