Skip to main content

US Government Launches Cyber Contest on AI to Find and Fix Security Flaws

By

The White House on Wednesday said it had launched a multimillion-dollar cyber contest to spur use of artificial intelligence (AI) to find and fix security flaws in US government infrastructure, in the face of growing use of the technology by hackers for malicious purposes. 

"Cybersecurity is a race between offense and defense," said Anne Neuberger, the US government's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology.

"We know malicious actors are already using AI to accelerate identifying vulnerabilities or build malicious software," she added in a statement to Reuters.

Numerous US organizations, from healthcare groups to manufacturing firms and government institutions, have been hacking targets in recent years, and officials have warned of future threats, especially from foreign adversaries. 

Neuberger's comments about AI echo those Canada's cybersecurity chief Samy Khoury made last month. He said his agency had seen AI being used for everything from creating phishing emails and writing malicious computer code to spreading disinformation.

The two-year contest includes around $20 million (nearly Rs. 165 crore) in rewards and will be led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the US government body in charge of creating technologies for national security — the White House said.

Alphabet's Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI — the US technology firms at the forefront of the AI revolution — will make their systems available for the challenge, the government said.

The contest signals official attempts to tackle an emerging threat that experts are still trying to fully grasp. In the past year, US firms have launched a range of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT that allow users to create convincing videos, images, texts, and computer code. Chinese companies have launched similar models to catch up.

Experts say such tools could make it far easier to, for instance, conduct mass hacking campaigns or create fake profiles on social media to spread false information and propaganda. 

"Our goal with the DARPA AI challenge is to catalyze a larger community of cyber defenders who use the participating AI models to race faster – using generative AI to bolster our cyber defenses," Neuberger said.

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a US group of experts trying to improve open source software security, will be in charge of ensuring the "winning software code is put to use right away," the US government said.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Adblock test (Why?)



from NDTV News- Special https://ift.tt/m4Io0iv https://ift.tt/Bc5oeOX
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

North Korea Says It Tested New Strategic Cruise Missile

By
North Korea test-fired a new generation of strategic cruise missile on Wednesday. (Representational) Seoul: North Korea fired several cruise missiles towards the Yellow Sea on Wednesday, Seoul's military said, the latest in a series of tension-raising moves by the nuclear-armed state. Hours later, North Korea appeared to confirm the firing, saying it had carried out its first test of a new generation of strategic cruise missiles it is developing, the Pulhwasal-3-31. Pyongyang has accelerated weapons testing in the new year, including tests of what it called an "underwater nuclear weapon system" and a solid-fuelled hypersonic ballistic missile. "Our military detected several cruise missiles launched by North Korea towards the Yellow Sea at around 7:00 am today," the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Unlike their ballistic counterparts, the testing of cruise missiles is not banned under current UN sanctions against Pyongyang. Cruise...
Post a Comment
Read more

18-Year-Old Killed By Friends Over Mobile Game Password In Bengal: Cops

By
According to cops, accused "friends" attempted to burn the victim after killing him. (Representational) Kolkata: An argument over sharing the password of an online mobile game allegedly led to the murder of a teenage boy by four of his friends in West Bengal's Murshidabad district, a senior police officer said. The body of 18-year-old Papai Das, who had been missing since January 8, was discovered near Nishindra Ghat of the feeder canal in Farakka on Monday, police said. Papai, a class 10 student, was reportedly killed by his four "close" friends after a disagreement over sharing the password for a mobile online game. The accused individuals have been arrested, police added. "These five individuals used to play online games at one of the quarters of the Farakka Barrage. The victim went out on the evening of January 8 and never returned. On January 9, the family lodged a police complaint. "Based on preliminary investigations, we discovered that...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Jaiswal Has Run Ahead Of Gill": Ex-India Star's Massive T20 WC Verdict

By
Former India opener Aakash Chopra has suggested that Yashasvi Jaiswal is slightly ahead of Shubman Gill in the pecking order as captain Rohit Sharma's partner at the top in T20Is. Since making his debut last year, Jaiswal has been in stunning form in the shortest format of the game. Gill's form, on the other hand, has dipped since the ODI World Cup last year in India. With the T20 World Cup scheduled to be held later this year, Chopra feels Jaiswal will open the innings with Rohit during the tournament. "It's clear that Yashasvi Jaiswal has run ahead of Shubman Gill. Yashasvi is ahead in the two-horse race, Gill is lagging slightly behind. Gill was played in the first match, dropped in the second, and wasn't played in the third as well," Chopra said on his YouTube channel. Jaiswal helped India beat Afghanistan in the second T20I earlier this week, scoring a quickfire fifty. Considering his recent form across formats, Chopra emphasised that Jaiswal has ...
Post a Comment
Read more