White House’s AI Cyber Challenge
US administration initiates rewards program for companies to create AI-led tools that can identify and fix software vulnerabilities
Barely a few months after OpenAI announced a rewards scheme for generating rules around generative AI systems, the White House has followed suit. The Biden Administration has initiated a competition that pits security teams across the United States to build cutting-edge AI tools that can identify and fix software vulnerabilities across its tech infrastructure.
Called the “AI Cyber Challenge”, the latest efforts to bolster America’s cyber defenses is led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in collaboration with top AI companies such as Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. They’ve committed $18.5 million as prize money for the competition with a top reward of $4 million.
A report published by SDxCentral says DARPA has also committed its support to seven small enterprises with a million dollars each in order to facilitate their participation in the early phase of this competition. The recent spate of cyberattacks including one where Microsoft’s stolen passkey played a role could well be one of the reasons for this exercise.
According to Perri Adams, program manager at the information office of DARPA, the group is hoping that success at finding such solutions could result in next gen cybersecurity tools in the country’s digital infrastructure space. Additionally, it could also showcase the capabilities of AI in a better light as a solution to battle cybercrime.
“By automatically defending critical software at scale, we can have the greatest impact for cybersecurity across the country, and the world,” the official said in a pre-briefing on the project, which reportedly has the express sign-offs from both President Biden as well as his vice-president Kamala Harris.
The solutions could be released as open source
The officials further clarified that the project is not just about owning such software and making users pay for its use. DARPA officials held the view that the challenge is to use AI to develop security software tools that can fix vulnerabilities and defend large data infrastructures against any form of cyberattacks.
And the winning solutions could be made available on an open source network so that others across the world can build upon it. For now, the competition is to start in the spring of 2024 with twenty of the top teams getting invited to participate in the semifinals at DEFCON 2024 slated in August next. Up to five companies from this final list could win monetary prizes with an invitation for the final phase to be held alongside DEFCON 2025.
Adams went on to confirm that the top three would get additional funds for sharing their source code into the open network so that it can be used by others, both in the voluntary open-source ecosystem as well as the commercial industry. The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a Linux Foundation project, will advise the winning entity on ways to bring their technology up for commercial use.
A government-industry partnership will bolster research
Reiterating the criticality of software as a crucial enabler of life on the planet, Adams warned that such systems also become the playground for malicious actors. Cyber defenders must be tasked with protecting this ever-growing gauntlet of software systems across the world that continuously talk to each other to simplify human transactions.
The latest initiative from the White House is a first of its kind effort to create AI-led systems to address cybersecurity. Anne Neugerger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology in the US, noted that the teams would have the power of modern AI to work through complex problems facing national security.
Industry bodies have welcomed the move saying such an initiative holds promise as it could potentially build on AI research. The efforts to fund such research in solving cybersecurity issues could bolster research and create smarter innovations in the future. In the past, DARPA has issued such challenges in order to broaden the scope of research towards resolving major problems that the US has faced in the past.
