Can AI spot vulnerabilities in infrastructure software?
LAS VEGAS — Over the next year, seven teams will hone AI-powered systems designed to harden the open-source software that underpins critical infrastructure—with a winner to be declared at next year's DEF CON hacker conference here.
The teams, which were the top scorers in the previous round of the AI Cyber Challenge, or AIxCC, were each awarded $2 million to continue their work.
Much of the nation's infrastructure runs on open-source tools, which are free to use and easy to modify. The code is publicly available, which means that anyone can hunt for bugs or vulnerabilities—to exploit or to fix. The contest, run by DARPA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, aims to develop better tools to do the latter. As part of the competition’s rules, teams must agree to open-source their systems.