Defense Department offers $18.5 million prize to protect critical infrastructure

Share post:

The Defense Department is offering a $18.5 million prize to cybersecurity professionals who can develop innovative AI tools to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.

The two-year challenge, called the AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC), will be held in conjunction with the DEF CON hacking conferences in 2024 and 2025. Participants will compete to develop AI-powered systems that can automatically detect and defend against cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, such as power grids, water treatment plants, and transportation systems.

The AIxCC is part of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) larger effort to use artificial intelligence to improve cybersecurity. The agency believes that AI has the potential to revolutionize cybersecurity by automating many of the tasks that are currently done by human analysts.

“The recent gains in AI, when used responsibly, have remarkable potential for securing our code,” said Perri Adams, program manager at DARPA’s Information Innovation Office. “This challenge is an opportunity to apply some of our greatest technical resources to protecting Americans.”

The AIxCC is open to individuals and teams from all over the world. To participate, teams must submit a proposal that outlines their approach to using AI to improve cybersecurity. The top five teams will be invited to compete in the final round of the challenge at DEF CON 2025. The winning team will receive a $4 million prize.

In addition to the prize money, the AIxCC winners will also have the opportunity to work with DARPA to further develop their technologies.

The sources for this piece include an article in Axios.

Featured Tech Jobs

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Related articles

Cyber Security Today, Week in Review for the week ending Friday, Sept. 29, 2023

This episode features discussion on October Security Awareness Month, ransomware, teenage hackers and the start of hearings into proposed Canadian privacy a

H&R Block sued for sharing tax data with Meta and Google

A class action lawsuit is alleging that H&R Block, Google, and Meta "jointly schemed" to install trackers on...

DeepMind rolls out human-style encouragement to enhance AI math abilities

Google DeepMind researchers have developed a new technique to improve the math ability of AI language models by...

Admins urged to quickly patch holes in WS_FTP file transfer server

This is the fourth file transfer application -- and the second from Progress Software -- to recently face critical vulne

Become a member

New, Relevant Tech Stories. Our article selection is done by industry professionals. Our writers summarize them to give you the key takeaways