DARPA Challenge Shows How Safe Your Shredded Documents Really Are

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to see exactly how vulnerable top secret information can be. In order to complete this task, they organized a contest in which the owner of the device that will be able to recompose a shredded message will take home a $50,000 prize.

It might seems like another mission impossible, but everything seems to be achievable for DARPA, the initiators of the project which focuses on the development of the first flying-fighting car.

The rules of this challenge are quite simple and easy to follow. The people interested in participating first have to sign up on the Shredder Challenge website, and then they have to download five files which represent the small pieces of the puzzle they have to put together to recreate the entire image.

Once they figured how to accomplish this task, all they have left is to send their result to DARPA, explain the entire process which allowed them to recompose the files and then answer to a few questions related to the topic.

"The goal is to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community," announced the representatives.

Each puzzle has a point value, which will be interpreted by experts from the organization on December 5th, when the lucky winner is announced. The number of points and the time one needed to put all the pieces together will be taken into account.

It seems that the significant value of the award has attracted approximately 240 participants so far, and there is still plenty of time for people to subscribe. So far, nobody was able to provide a winning answer and experts couldn't say if solving the five puzzles is a matter of days, weeks or months.

The contest relies on the fact that a potential winner might come up with an innovative idea DARPA hasn't thought about. It could have a negative impact if it ended up in the hands of bad guys, but it could also be highly beneficial in spying and controlling the enemies of the American nation.

Such a breakthrough would be very important for officials and also for common individuals, since everybody is concerned about the safety of their private documents.