{"id":1169871,"date":"2023-08-09T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1169871"},"modified":"2023-08-09T13:00:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T17:00:03","slug":"the-white-houses-ai-cyber-challenge-aims-to-crowdsource-national-security-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1169871","title":{"rendered":"The White House's 'AI Cyber Challenge' aims to crowdsource national security solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our local and state level government systems are hacked and held ransom<\/a> with disheartening regularity. At the Black Hat USA Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the Biden Administration revealed its plans to better defend the nation\u2019s critical digital infrastructure: It’s launching a DARPA-led challenge competition to build AI systems capable of proactively identifying and fixing software vulnerabilities. That\u2019s right, we\u2019re having a hackathon!<\/p>\n

The \u201cAI Cyber Challenge\u201d (AIxCC) is a two-year development program open to competitors throughout the US. It\u2019s being hosted by DARPA in collaboration with Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Those companies are providing both their expertise in the field and access to their AI technologies.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe challenge is critical in bringing together the cutting-edge in automatic software, security and AI, which will empower our cyber defenses by being able to quickly exploit and fix software vulnerabilities,\u201d Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, said during a press call Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the ways that public and private sectors work together to do big things to change how the future unfolds,\u201d Arati Prabhakar, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, added. \u201cThat’s why the White House asked DARPA to take on the critical topic of AI for cybersecurity.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House officials concede that properly securing the nation\u2019s sprawling federal software systems against intrusion is a daunting task. \u201cThey don’t have the tools capable of security at this scale,\u201d Perri Adams, Program Manager, Information Innovation Office, DARPA, said during the call. \u201cWe’ve seen in recent years, hackers exploiting the state of affairs, posing a serious national security risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite those vulnerabilities, \u201cI think we have to keep one step ahead and AI offers a very promising approach for that,\u201d Adams said. There\u2019s nearly $20 million in prize money up for grabs. And to ensure that the competition isn\u2019t dominated by the teams with the deepest pockets, DARPA is making $7 million available to small businesses who want to compete as well.<\/p>\n

The research agency will hold an open qualifying event next spring where the top scoring teams (up to 20 can potentially qualify) will get invited to the semifinals at DEF CON 24. That cohort will be whittled down to the top five teams, who will win monetary prizes at the competition and be invited back to DEF CON 25 for the finals. The top three scoring teams from DC25 will win even more money. You land first place, you get $4 million \u2014 but to do so, your AI had better be able to, \u201crapidly defend critical infrastructure codes from attack,\u201d per White House officials. Ideally, the resulting system would scour networks seeking out and autonomously repairing any software security bugs it finds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The winning team will also be strongly encouraged to open-source their resulting program. The competition is bringing on The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a Linux Foundation project, as an advisor to the challenge. Their job is to help ensure that the code is put to use immediately, \u201cby everyone from volunteer, open-source developers to commercial industry,\u201d Adams said. \u201cIf we’re successful, I hope to see AIxCC not only produce the next generation of cybersecurity tools in this space, but show how AI can be used to better society by defending its critical underpinnings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president has been completely clear that we have got to get AI right for the American people,\u201d Prabhakar said. Last fall the Biden White House unveiled its Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights<\/a>, which defined the Administration\u2019s core values and goals on the subject. Follow-up efforts included pushing for an AI risk management framework<\/a> and investing $140 million in establishing seven new national research institutes to AI and machine learning<\/a>. In July, the White House also wrangled a number of leading AI companies to agree to (non-binding) assertions that they will develop their products responsibly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/the-white-houses-ai-cyber-challenge-aims-to-crowdsource-national-security-solutions-170003434.html?src=rss
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\nSource: Engadget – The White House’s ‘AI Cyber Challenge’ aims to crowdsource national security solutions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our local and state level government systems are hacked and held ransom with disheartening regularity. At the Black Hat USA Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the Biden Administration revealed its plans to better defend the nation\u2019s critical digital infrastructure: … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1169871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1169871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1169871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1169871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1169871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}