14 DAY TRIAL // The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced the Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC). The goal is to develop a fully automatic network defense system designed to perform various IT security-related tasks on its own.
DARPA is offering $2 million (€1.5 million) to the team that can develop a system that’s capable of evaluating software, finding vulnerabilities, generating patches and even applying them.
“DARPA’s series of vehicle Grand Challenges were the dawn of the self-driving car revolution,” said Mike Walker, DARPA program manager.
“With the Cyber Grand Challenge, we intend a similar revolution for information security. Today, our time to patch a newly discovered security flaw is measured in days. Through automatic recognition and remediation of software flaws, the term for a new cyber attack may change from zero-day to zero-second.”
DAPRA basically wants a Capture the Flag competition between autonomous systems.
“The growth trends we’ve seen in cyber attacks and malware point to a future where automation must be developed to assist IT security analysts,” said Dan Kaufman, director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, which oversees the Challenge.
In order to encourage participation, teaming forums will be hosted on DARPA’s CGC website. The final round of the competition, which will be attended by the top competitors from the qualifying round, will take place in the first part of 2016.
The first place team is not the only one to be rewarded. The runner up gets $1 million (€750,000). The prize for the third place is $750,000 (€545,000).
A Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) has been made available. Those interested in participating have two options: to fund the solution on their own, or, if they’re proposal is interesting enough, they can be awarded a contract by DARPA.