Security News

DARPA, ARPA-H award $14m to 7 AIxCC semifinalists, with a catch
2024-08-15 19:15

One year after it began, the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge has whittled its pool of contestants down to seven semifinalists. The contest, unexpectedly announced at Black Hat in 2023, saw teams competing to build AI models able to better secure open source code undergirding many of the systems used in critical infrastructure.

DARPA suggests turning old C code automatically into Rust – using AI, of course
2024-08-03 10:03

It's a DARPA project that aims to develop machine-learning tools that can automate the conversion of legacy C code into Rust. "You can go to any of the LLM websites, start chatting with one of the AI chatbots, and all you need to say is 'here's some C code, please translate it to safe idiomatic Rust code,' cut, paste, and something comes out, and it's often very good, but not always," said Dan Wallach, DARPA program manager for TRACTOR, in a statement.

DARPA takes its long-duration Manta undersea drone for a test-dip
2023-09-28 18:36

DARPA's extended-duration unmanned undersea vehicle is having its first aquatic excursion to test if this naval drone has wings, er, fins. The splash test was part of DARPA's Manta Ray program for America's next-generation of undersea power projection, with PacMar Technologies and Northrop Grumman each building their own prototype UUVs.

DARPA study challenges assumptions about distributed ledger (and Bitcoin) security
2022-06-22 13:30

The finding is part of a study [PDF] conducted by IT security researchers at Trail of Bits and commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that points to several ways in which the immutability of blockchain - the distributed ledger on which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rely - can be called into question. "Of Bitcoin's nodes, 21 percent were running an old version of the Bitcoin Core client that is known to be vulnerable in June of 2021," the study said.

Intrinsic ID partners with DARPA to offer digital authentication and security tech to researchers
2021-08-03 23:35

Intrinsic ID announced a partnership with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make its digital authentication and security technology accessible to DARPA researchers. The...

DARPA nails cash to project 'FENCE' — a smart camera that only sends pics when pixels change
2021-07-06 05:29

The USA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced it will fund development of a new type of "Event-based" camera that only transmits information about pixels that have changed. The Agency last week announced last week that Raytheon, BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman will develop the new snapper under the Fast Event-based Neuromorphic Camera and Electronics program.

Intel partners with DARPA to perform in Data Protection in Virtual Environments program
2021-03-09 02:30

Intel announced that it has signed an agreement with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to perform in its Data Protection in Virtual Environments program. The multiyear program represents a cross-team effort across multiple Intel groups, including Intel Labs, the Design Engineering Group and the Data Platforms Group, to tackle "The final frontier" in data privacy, which is computing on fully encrypted data without access to decryption keys.

DARPA taps Intel to help build the holy grail of encryption
2021-03-08 14:00

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has signed an agreement with Intel to add it to its Data Protection in Virtual Environments project, which aims to create a practically useful form of fully homomorphic encryption. Fully homomorphic encryption has been described as the "Holy grail" of encryption because it allows encrypted data to be used without ever having to decrypt it.

DARPA Bug Bounty Program Seeks to Harden SSITH Hardware Protections
2020-06-10 10:56

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is running a bug bounty program in an effort to find security vulnerabilities in a new, advanced implementation of the System Security Integration Through Hardware and Firmware program. With the new bug bounty program, DARPA is looking to harden SSITH hardware security protections in development.

BAE Systems receives DARPA contract to prevent vulnerabilities in electronic files
2019-12-12 04:00

BAE Systems has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop new cyber tools designed to help prevent vulnerabilities in electronic files that...