Battle of machines for Cyber defense (The World's first Machine Hacking Tournament)

When i saw this online, i couldn't help but think of PoI (for non movie followers, it's Person of Interest), where the 'machine' engaged in serious battle with the great but controlling Samaritan, it was the battle of super AIs. 

Well if you have watched the movie, chill, it's not that type of intelligent machines that will be doing battle in the world's first machine tournament, at least according to the organizers DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency).

 

This has everything to do with IoT, because logically, the more connected and sensitive devices, the more exposed they will be when they are eventually connected. Some of the devices that will be interconnected in the IoT, will be security vulnerable and prone to cyber attacks. 

So in other to gain ground before we enter the IoT age on cyber attacks, DARPA, a part of US defense Department, decided to start this program in earnest. According to DARPA web site, 

"Today's approach to cybersecurity depends on computer security experts: experts identify new flaws and threats and remediate them by hand. This process can take over a year from first detection to the deployment of a solution, by which time critical systems may have already been breached. This slow reaction cycle has created a permanent offensive advantage.

The Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) seeks to automate this cyber defense process, fielding the first generation of machines that can discover, prove and fix software flaws in real-time, without any assistance. If successful, the speed of autonomy could someday blunt the structural advantages of cyber offense."

This if successful, will really go a long way in helping realize the Internet of Things dream, because whether we like it or not, many sensitive infrastructures will be interconnected, and it would be disastrous if cyber hackers should take control of these devices easily. 

For some of us really far away in terms of location, but not that far in terms of connection, we will be looking forward to 4th of August, which is the fixed date for the final from our screens.