Christian Badolato
PhD Student
CSEE Department
UMBC
Research conducted with a team of students as part of the SFS Winter Study 2025
12:00 noon–1pm
Friday, March 28, 2025
Remotely via WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman
Abstract
Generative AI has the potential to improve user search experiences by supporting natural language querying and
providing more detailed and domain-specific responses. UMBC is seeking to provide this convenience to myUMBC users
through the myUMBC Answers system, which enables users to access both personal and UMBC services information from
the myUMBC search bar. In this talk, we investigate the resiliency of Answers against several common generative AI
attacks that were performed by the UMBC Scholarship for Service (SFS) scholars in collaboration with other students and
the UMBC Division of Information Technology (DoIT). We first provide an overview of the study and the myUMBC
Answers system before discussing the types of attacks which were launched against the system. We then explore the
behavior of the Answers system in response to these attacks. Finally, we outline the recommendations provided to DoIT
by the study participants to improve the security and user experience of myUMBC Answers.
About the Speaker
Christian Badolato (cbad1@umbc.edu) is a PhD student of Roberto Yus, focusing on Data Privacy in the Internet of
Things at UMBC after having received his master’s degree from the same university. He has several years of experience
as a software architect and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.
Host:
Alan T. Sherman, sherman@umbc.edu
Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681.
The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1pm. All meetings are open to the public.
Upcoming CDL meetings:
Apr 11, Keke Chen (UMBC), Adaptive Domain Inference Attack
(May 2 – CSEE Research Day)
May 9, Charles Nicholas (UMBC), Document security