DARPA begins developing computer security systems capable of independently finding and fixing vulnerabilities

Agency DARPA announced the start of a new large-scale program in the “Grand Challenge” format. The goal of the Cyber ​​Grand Challenge program is to create computer security systems that can automatically analyze and fix vulnerabilities. Today, this work is carried out by highly qualified experts, and the closure of “holes” takes days and months. DARPA wants to reduce this period to hours and minutes.

Security systems of the new generation should analyze software and computer networks, create patches, test and apply them without human intervention. It sounds like a fantasy, but it is worth remembering past competitions in the same format - in 2004, 2005 and 2007, the goal of the DARPA Grand Challenge was to create a fully autonomous car. They participated in including the team at Stanford University, led by Sebastian Trun, who continued to work on the creation of an autonomous car in the corporation Google.

The main prize of the competition is $ 2,000,000 for first place, 1,000,000 for second, and 750,000 for third. DARPA is sure that even if the participants fail to create a fully autonomous system by the end of the competition in 2016, it is very important to start such attempts as early as possible, because now cyber weapons in the form of viruses and coordinated hacker attacks hitting the enemy’s computer systems become a reality. To defend against it, it is necessary to create automatic protective systems capable of reacting to a threat an order of magnitude faster than a person.
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You can get acquainted with the detailed conditions of the competition on its official website . The competition is open, participation in it is free. The only restriction is that only US citizens or organizations registered and operating in the US are eligible to participate.