Purdue cybersecurity professor works to close the door on hackers

A Purdue University professor is focused on halting those software attacks. Santiago Torres Arias, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, said a cumulative increase of 500% in the number of software supply chain compromises is giving hackers the weak link they need to attack a system. Torres Arias said that in supply chain security, hackers will search to find that one program in a chain of software that is vulnerable and hack it. “Supply chain security compromises are attacks where someone targets the left side of the equation and how a piece of software is produced,” Torres Arias said. “They’re not targeting the people using the system, but rather the producers, so that when people then use the software themselves, the system is compromised.”