DARPA Issues $2mil Cyber Grand Challenge 67
First time accepted submitter Papa Fett writes "DARPA announced the Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC)--the first-ever tournament for fully automatic network defense systems. International teams will compete to build systems that reason about software flaws, formulate patches and deploy them on a network in real time. Teams would be scored against each other based on how capably their systems can protect hosts, scan the network for vulnerabilities, and maintain the correct function of software. The winning team would receive a cash prize of $2 million , with second place earning $1 million and third place taking home $750,000." Also at Slashcloud.
$2 Million as a bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Darpa's intention is not to build a secured system, but rather, finding fresh international talents to enable NSA to break more systems all over the world.
I am an American, and it is not that I do not trust my own country.
I do trust my country.
I simply have lost all trust to my own government.
Re:$2 Million as a bait (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, you have absolute trust in your government to misbehave.
No.
I have absolute confidence that as long as lobbyist's intentions are to fight for private entities to maximize revenue streams as the #1 priority at all times, it will all but guarantee absolute corruption, which is what we have today.
You're kidding yourself if you think Congress runs the show around here. They are the lobbyist's bitch.
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Exactly. The worst mistake America is making right now is thinking that it's "private sector vs public sector".
It's usually "public sector and private sector vs you".
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Maybe the Slashdot moderation system is meant to inspire people who have realised that their votes were "wrong" to speak out? :p
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Which lobby does the NSA serve?
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All of them, including conflicting ones, prioritized by money received.
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Re:$2 Million as a bait (Score:5, Insightful)
As a respresentative democracy, the government is who we vote in. However, as long as billionaires and their corporations control political funding, there is no chance that we will be able to vote in people that can make a real difference. It also does not help that they fund polarizing news organizations that discourages debate and promotes ridgid ideological agendas.
Overthrowing the government is useless. Any new government that forms will immediately be under the influence of vested interests. We need real political finance reform in order to have lasting effect.
Re:$2 Million as a bait (Score:4, Interesting)
However, as long as billionaires and their corporations control political funding, there is no chance that we will be able to vote in people that can make a real difference.
Thats not really true. The votes still have to come from the people; all the funding does is get the word out.
We need real political finance reform in order to have lasting effect.
To my eyes the problem is that restricting the things an organization may say (in advertising, for example) seems to run directly afoul of the first amendment.
Seems to me youre saying you think the indirect influence of lobbying / campaign contributions has a sufficiently negative effect that it outweighs directly attacking the right of free speech. Im not really comfortable with that notion, the first amendment seems pretty core to a functioning democracy.
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If shouting 'FIRE' in a crowed theater is a acceptable limitation of free speech, so is campaign finance limitations. The first amendment is important to a functioning representative democray, but it is not the be-all-and-end-all of a democratic republic.
The first amendment guarantees your right to speak and express yourself freely, but not to buy influence by directly or indirectly funding candidates in voting.
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If shouting 'FIRE' in a crowed theater is a acceptable limitation of free speech,
Shouting fire in a crowded theatre has a sufficiently negative outcome, and such an insignificant worth as political speech, that restricting it isnt really a problem.
so is campaign finance limitations.
Youre now talking about restricting political speech which is EXACTLY what the first amendment was designed to protect. It is such an important thing that we have the right to say anything without restriction in the political arena, that Im not really comfortable
but not to buy influence by directly or indirectly funding candidates in voting.
You can attempt to word it however you like, but the first amendment makes it cle
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Repeat after me: Money is not speech. Corporations are not people.
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You talk of "buying influence" but theres no way around it; unless you want to make it illegal to be paid to state your opinion (which would kill commercials and would also seem to be a serious compromise), any attempt I can think of to control campaign advertising would be a dangerous attack on political speech.
Dangerous? to whom? The only danger is that we end up with a fairer system.
There's no slippery slope argument here at all, so why are people insisting that there is. We have always had limits on free speech, for a variety of mainly very good reasons. Political speech is already relatively deregulated - which is causing the problems we are seeing now.
Most of the wealth in the US is owned by a relatively small number of people. A great majority of these people want this situation to remain.
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Dangerous? to whom? The only danger is that we end up with a fairer system.
Do you understand why we have free political speech? The "danger" is you end up with a system where the government can arbitrarily decide that your speech is not allowed -- without any of the current restraints we place on their ability to do so. The entire point of a democracy is that the people can be heard; allowing those in power to decide WHAT may be heard undermines that.
There's no slippery slope argument here at all, so why are people insisting that there is
Yes, there is, because every test we have for whether speech may be restricted by the government hinges on the question of whether
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The system right now is skewed towards those with the mean necessary to drown out reasonable voices. Instead of the government arbitrarily deciding who gets to run in an election, you have rich individuals and corporations that decide. It this situation any better than the alternative? Unlike government, we the people, have no oversight of these private parties because it's all done in the shadows with money being moved all over the place to obscure who the benefactors are.
The whole idea of the US constitut
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Your defense of the first is admirable, but try to remember that there are reasonable limits on the freedom of speech. No shouting fire in a crowded theater for example.
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So you believe that money = free speech.
No. But how you spend your money on advertising is as much "speech" as is paying a printing press to publish your opinion.
In other words, "money" isnt exactly the same as speech, but the two are often tied together; if make it illegal to use your money to state your political view, then for all practical purposes you have abolished free speech.
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It's a tricky balance. A corporation speaks with the combined resources of the entire organisation, but often only in the direction that a handful of senior managers choose. This means that said managers have a disproportionately large voice in the political sphere. On the other hand, the same could be said of things like labour unions, although those (ostensibly) talk with the democratically-selected voice of their members.
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If enough people recognize this and vote for their own interests and the interests of the community (and the country), then we have a jab at making it happen. It's a lot easier to flight for a new system than to fight to improve the existing system, but it's rather reckless to overthrow a established, relatively stable, relatively well-designed political system for something that can be fixed with a Act of Congress isn't it?
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Bonus being that the winner can then be arrested for hacking with a fine of $2 million...
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Two million? (Score:1)
Chump change for a project like this. No one with the skills to build a good solution will give it away for two million.
Re:Two million? (Score:4, Insightful)
Chump change for a project like this. No one with the skills to build a good solution will give it away for two million.
Who said give it away? They'll probably take the 2,000,000 then sell the system as the "DARPA Cyber Challenge winner". There is no requirement for the software to be free or open source.
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I'm more along the line of: How much time do I have to make this ? But It looks like unless you make it it through a qualifying round, you need an invitation to join. and I have been unable to find anything that resembles information about a due date.
Even given that I can get enough of my programming friends to go along with the idea, and we can find a design we can work with, it will take maybe 5-10 manpower years to get something this size going (look at the requirements). Winning becomes mandatory, if 10
What happened to Skynet? (Score:3, Funny)
I thought they already have it running. Did their crash and lost the backup?
Cybersecurity (Score:3)
This may be why the kids don't want those "potentially secure" cybersecurity jobs.
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Because single-minded buffoons who have immense skills in one area but no skills elsewhere are suckers for this sort of thing.
And that's just the sort of person big businesses/government (but I repeat myself) want for grunt work.
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The pleasure of applying one's abilities to an interesting problem. Those are the people you have to watch out for, the ones who would do the work even if they weren't getting told to or paid to.
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You don't actually know how a DoWhatever grand challenge works, do you?
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On unknown, illegal response string or (Score:1)
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What is described in the summary isn't "impossible" at all. It doesn't say it has to delivery 100% security. This system itself will probably introduce some nice new vectors of attack too.
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Indeed.
The human mind's greatest privilege is not having to reveal how it's working.
Egads! "build systems that reason" ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you could "build systems that reason" you'd be able to get a whole lot more than $2mil - why would anyone divulge this technology to the government when they could license it to Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and everyone else? If I had this technology, my first stop would be the patent office and I would patent it out the wazoo and start licensing it. If the government wants it, they can get in line.
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Wait in line? Hah! They'd just strip your name off, make an ACA healthcare exchange server out of it, and LOL at your insignificance.
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If I had tech that's that advanced, I'd stay clear of the patent office. I'd make sure that it remains secret and would let it work for me.
Also, you seem to have the illusion that a patent protects you from the government. If the government really wants it, it can simply declare it a matter of national security and bypass the patent office. Sorry, no money for you.
All threats? (Score:2)
I'd like to see a software system effectively deal with social engineering as well as other criminal vectors. Software is only going to be able to protect its own silo of information.
Also, we see a lot of programmers relying on code from outside sources. They don't typically debug someone else's code which is a ripe area for exploit vectors.
Combine these elements and you have our present day situation. I don't see any of this addressed in the competition.
They appear to be assuming the network is not corrupt
laughable (Score:2, Interesting)
if you can make a system like this, you can make billions in the private sector. why would you give it to DARPA for a lousy two million?
if the DoD is going to spend 12 billion a year making a jet that we dont need [wikipedia.org], why not give two billion to the group that comes up with a solid working solution? i assure you, two billion dollars will get you a hell of a lot of attention from the best people out there, with teams of hundreds of experts. a global challenge would result in a much better chance of success
Re:laughable (Score:5, Informative)
We go through this every time there is a DARPA challenge:
Do you think all the participants of the past DARPA grand challenges relating to autonomous vehicles have given away their IP? Of course not. Those teams that pushed through have made lucrative deals with car manufacturers and others.
All DARPA want's to do is spur innovation. A challenge like this is essentially a heads up that in 5 years they'd like to spend a lot of money on procuring services like these. In the past, they'd just give someone the money to build it, and maybe it worked, maybe it didn't. At least now it's a bit more market driven.
I win (Score:1)
Totally wrong idea (Score:3)
You cannot have cyber security by having some software (or hardware) around to just do it for you. Real security is about HOW you do everything else. It appears someone thinks all security exploits are just badly implemented API calls?
I've got an idea! (Score:3)
The title of my contest entry will be called the MCP (Master Control Program). It will enslave all other programs on the network.