12 ms·

DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge

82 points by bra-ket 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Will be interesting but a distraction from real INFOSEC work. DARPA and NSF have been leading the way with programs investing in real security. All kinds of results from SAFE processor to CHERI capability architecture to self-diversifying systems to inherently secure programming have come from this. Their HACMS work, for example, was even integrated into a UAV software. It's that sort of work that's really delivering and needs more support. Smart people at institutions with good grant writers should stay watching all the DARPA and NSF security funding announcements. Plenty of money going around to solve fundamental problems. Great results so far that just need more development and adoption. And more bright men and women in the trenches fighting the rest of the hard problems.
- minthd 11y ago
  I wonder , are those technologies scalable to micro-controllers ? because there the problem of backward compatibility is significantly reduces - as long as you supply a tcp/ip stack and an efficient compiler, the rest of the code is relatively easy , in many cases.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Yes, actually. Heck, the very limited PDP-1 was a capability machine of sorts. Most microcontrollers run circles around it. The simplest of the new schemes check small tags with hardware that runs in parallel to the processor. Essentially, the processor executes the instruction and the result is not written unless parallel unit says "All good." This should have little performance, latency, and chip area overhead. I'm not saying every microcontroller of every cost and such can be done this way: probably just mid- to high-end microcontrollers will be secure by design. Also, there's long been chips design to run languages that are type- or memory-safe by design. Sandia Labs recently made a high assurance processor for a Java subset: the Sandia Secure Processor (SSP) or "Score" processor. It doesn't allow new code in production mode, resists all kinds of errors, has assured tool sets, has a converter from legacy Java to its, speaks JVM natively with associated benefits, uses asynchronous interrupts for determinism, and is fabbed in a rad-hard process. They aimed at safety & assurance over throughput so the specs are 25Mhz from 35,000 logic gates (110K with memory). Their ASSET framework and its high assurance design also led to amazing feet of 3 weeks from synthesis to working ASIC with no timing errors. They said similar projects normally take 6 to 18 months (!!!). In closing, the above is evidence embedded can benefit. Yet, two in embedded just popped into my mind: CodeSEAL and smartcards. CodeSEAL combines custom hardware with a processor to (a) encrypt and hash memory pages to stop leaks or attacks outside SOC; (b) control flow whitelist produced by compiler to block all attempts to hijack it. MicroSEMI sells this commercially. Other one is smartcards: microcontrollers with strongly assured hardware, firmware, VM's, and so on for small prices. I should've thought of them first because they kind of answer the whole question, don't they? Guess it doesn't hurt to spread more info on high assurance security tech. ;)
    - minthd 11y ago
      Thanks! Very interesting, especially the sandia rapid development tool.Could be really useful in creating low-cost mcu's. I've looked through a few of the examples, and they are useful, but they require a different toolset from what real-time engineers use(JVM/CodeSEAL), and you probably need to certify your code in order to get eal6+ for your system. All those are big barriers for penetration, which probably creates less incentive for mcu companies to develop eal6+ mcu's with rich peripherials which will appeal to the market. Do you see a way out of this ? maybe using rust(or some other language), an eal6+ certified RTOS and an eal6+ mcu , would enable people creating secure real-time systems without need of certification?
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
        The toolset differences are a huge barrier to market penetration. It's why technically superior, but architecturally different, products of the past were ignored to our loss. Itanium, with its advanced security, is a recent example. Not all are like that, though. There are a number that just protect pointers, do segments, do address space protection (see INTEGRITY-178B), or vary the granularity of the protection for legacy compatibility. These tend to support a modified UNIX/Linux kernel and/or GCC modifications. Things are otherwise the same. So, there's potential in those. I found the following looking into embedded use and what works with similar tools. This tagging scheme [1] integrates with RTEMS and C albeit with more complexity than some. The guarded pointers [2] from mid-90's probably would work well with microcontrollers given embedded code is often fairly static, esp safety-critical schemes. The critiques shouldn't apply as much except cost of extra bits. The SAFE architecture's PUMP [3] does arbitrary policies with costs that might put it outside of microcontroller range (high end? mid-range?). One can even use the old Burrough's model where 2 tags bits per word are used to ID pointers and code. Writes to either generate an interrupt for security system to approve based on context. Again, embedded is static enough that there should be no such interrupts in normal operation if pointer-arithmetic is avoided, right? Feel free to give your thoughts on these in terms of microcontrollers or low-cost microprocessors. [1] http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Files/orgs/ENGR/Research/CSDS/2014/A%20New%20Operating%20System%20for%20Security%20Tagged%20Architecture%20Hardware%20in%20Support%20of%20Multiple%20Independent%20Levels%20of%20Security%202014.ashx http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Files/orgs/ENGR/Research/CSDS/... [2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/skeckler/pubs/asplos94.pdf https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/skeckler/pubs/asplos94.pdf [3] http://www.crash-safe.org/assets/PUMP-ASPLOS-2015.pdf http://www.crash-safe.org/assets/PUMP-ASPLOS-2015.pdf
schoen 11y ago
This is a neat idea, nicely presented. The proposal appeals to a wide audience by explaining the defensive significance of the tools it asks participants to develop. Is there any reason to think that people who were directly or indirectly involved in proposing this challenging are also interested in offensive applications, and chose not to talk about them?
- irl_zebra 11y ago
  >> Is there any reason to think that people who were directly or indirectly involved in proposing this challenging are also interested in offensive applications, and chose not to talk about them? Yes, the competition is run by DARPA.
- avoutthere 11y ago
  > nicely presented I couldn't disagree more.
  - schoen 11y ago
    Sorry, I didn't actually go through the entire scrolling graphics thing, I just read the explanation of the idea. I'll agree that that part didn't add to my understanding and I didn't intend to praise it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
daveloyall 11y ago
> The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
fapjacks 11y ago
Jesus. This site hurts to use. What's with the UI pigeonholing?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tim333 11y ago
  Plus it was using about 30% CPU for the one page.
fapjacks 11y ago
Or, less formally, the "Build An Internet That Pwns Itself For The Government" contest.
- daveloyall 11y ago
  I read it as the "Build an Auto-Pwner for the Government" contest.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    Yes, in the immediate sense of the story, you're right. But when I look into my crystal ball, I see so many of these machines running continually that it becomes an internet that hands control of itself to the US government (and any of our "allies" paying the ante of, say, forty F-35s, or whatever newfangled hardware they build to burn up on the runway).
- ENGNR 11y ago
  Pwning is easy for a skilled attacker vs an unskilled defender (the current situation). With the focus on automatic evaluating and healing, it could seriously help out unskilled defenders.
- colinthompson 11y ago
  Where would silicon valley, and the world in general, be without DARPA? Not that I am trying to support any big brother agenda, but it's hard to deny that your smartphone and computer owe at least some part of their existence to efforts on the part of the US defense budget. Again, I am not trying to take sides, I just find it shortsighted to cast a disapproving eye on government projects....or at least funding.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    You are reading words that aren't there. I didn't actually say whether or not I thought that was a bad thing.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
facepalm 11y ago
I suppose the challenge is to read through the site and successfully extract it's meaning?
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Lmao. My initial reaction exactly. DARPA's writers are usually better than this if it's something open to the public. Other times, they do it on purpose. Maybe they got mixed up on which style to use.
jmgrosen 11y ago
I'm on a team that will be participating in the upcoming qualifier for the finals. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the challenge (that I know the answers to), though not any about our specific techniques ;)
- plantbased 11y ago
  For the love of god give us all the TL;DR, the site is awful.
bahador 11y ago
Please let's all agree that scroll-jacking must die.
frik 11y ago
TL;DR: It's about the "Internet of Things" It's a buzzword with an vision that can have a positive but also a negative outcome for our society. For example: The nest thermostat learns your behavior and selects your favorite temperature depending the day of time, the ambient light, ... it learns with you - and actually helps to save you energy. The opposite is a "smart meter" forced on you by new regulations that isn't smart at all and doesn't help you to save energy but sends your power usage data (your private life data) in regular intervals over the net to the usual data collectors. Another example: All Ford automobiles that come with the Sync board computer (2008-2015, Windows CE based) can be optionally set to do the following in the event of a crash (at the time when the airbags go off): use your phone connected via Bluetooth, set a call to the international emergency hotline, speak via the Nuance Text-To-Speech software an emergency text including your current position (car have an inbuilt GPS antenna) and open the microphone so that you can talk with the emergency hotline or at least they can hear the audio if you are unable to speak. On the otherside, some lobbies try to propose in the US/EU a new law where every car has to share its location and some other "metadata" in a short interval (as soon as you turn on your motor) to a central data collector - so that in the event of an accident they know where you are, as they say. Decide yourself which version of the "Internet of Things" vision you want to have in your everyday life.
- darkmighty 11y ago
  The nest thermostat is a completely different device from an utility smart meter. For example, I can see smart meters helping provide real time data to the utility about power usage. Utilities are engaged in an enormous task of forescating power demand, which is probably much harder than weather forecasting even (as that is a subtask of demand forecasting!) -- and can net huge savings for the companies; or allowing more fair pricing schemes that discourage usage in times of high demand; etc. That's a real benefit for society. I don't think there's a need to put a tin foil hat and demand that all personally identifiable information collection be ceased. We instead just have to make sure this info is getting used properly (within the designated scope) with according security for each problem. In other words: scrutiny, not celibacy.
  - 11y ago

82 points by bra-ket 11y ago

Will be interesting but a distraction from real INFOSEC work. DARPA and NSF have been leading the way with programs investing in real security. All kinds of results from SAFE processor to CHERI capability architecture to self-diversifying systems to inherently secure programming have come from this. Their HACMS work, for example, was even integrated into a UAV software. It's that sort of work that's really delivering and needs more support. Smart people at institutions with good grant writers should stay watching all the DARPA and NSF security funding announcements. Plenty of money going around to solve fundamental problems. Great results so far that just need more development and adoption. And more bright men and women in the trenches fighting the rest of the hard problems.

minthd 11y ago
I wonder , are those technologies scalable to micro-controllers ? because there the problem of backward compatibility is significantly reduces - as long as you supply a tcp/ip stack and an efficient compiler, the rest of the code is relatively easy , in many cases.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Yes, actually. Heck, the very limited PDP-1 was a capability machine of sorts. Most microcontrollers run circles around it. The simplest of the new schemes check small tags with hardware that runs in parallel to the processor. Essentially, the processor executes the instruction and the result is not written unless parallel unit says "All good." This should have little performance, latency, and chip area overhead. I'm not saying every microcontroller of every cost and such can be done this way: probably just mid- to high-end microcontrollers will be secure by design. Also, there's long been chips design to run languages that are type- or memory-safe by design. Sandia Labs recently made a high assurance processor for a Java subset: the Sandia Secure Processor (SSP) or "Score" processor. It doesn't allow new code in production mode, resists all kinds of errors, has assured tool sets, has a converter from legacy Java to its, speaks JVM natively with associated benefits, uses asynchronous interrupts for determinism, and is fabbed in a rad-hard process. They aimed at safety & assurance over throughput so the specs are 25Mhz from 35,000 logic gates (110K with memory). Their ASSET framework and its high assurance design also led to amazing feet of 3 weeks from synthesis to working ASIC with no timing errors. They said similar projects normally take 6 to 18 months (!!!). In closing, the above is evidence embedded can benefit. Yet, two in embedded just popped into my mind: CodeSEAL and smartcards. CodeSEAL combines custom hardware with a processor to (a) encrypt and hash memory pages to stop leaks or attacks outside SOC; (b) control flow whitelist produced by compiler to block all attempts to hijack it. MicroSEMI sells this commercially. Other one is smartcards: microcontrollers with strongly assured hardware, firmware, VM's, and so on for small prices. I should've thought of them first because they kind of answer the whole question, don't they? Guess it doesn't hurt to spread more info on high assurance security tech. ;)
  - minthd 11y ago
    Thanks! Very interesting, especially the sandia rapid development tool.Could be really useful in creating low-cost mcu's. I've looked through a few of the examples, and they are useful, but they require a different toolset from what real-time engineers use(JVM/CodeSEAL), and you probably need to certify your code in order to get eal6+ for your system. All those are big barriers for penetration, which probably creates less incentive for mcu companies to develop eal6+ mcu's with rich peripherials which will appeal to the market. Do you see a way out of this ? maybe using rust(or some other language), an eal6+ certified RTOS and an eal6+ mcu , would enable people creating secure real-time systems without need of certification?
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      The toolset differences are a huge barrier to market penetration. It's why technically superior, but architecturally different, products of the past were ignored to our loss. Itanium, with its advanced security, is a recent example. Not all are like that, though. There are a number that just protect pointers, do segments, do address space protection (see INTEGRITY-178B), or vary the granularity of the protection for legacy compatibility. These tend to support a modified UNIX/Linux kernel and/or GCC modifications. Things are otherwise the same. So, there's potential in those. I found the following looking into embedded use and what works with similar tools. This tagging scheme [1] integrates with RTEMS and C albeit with more complexity than some. The guarded pointers [2] from mid-90's probably would work well with microcontrollers given embedded code is often fairly static, esp safety-critical schemes. The critiques shouldn't apply as much except cost of extra bits. The SAFE architecture's PUMP [3] does arbitrary policies with costs that might put it outside of microcontroller range (high end? mid-range?). One can even use the old Burrough's model where 2 tags bits per word are used to ID pointers and code. Writes to either generate an interrupt for security system to approve based on context. Again, embedded is static enough that there should be no such interrupts in normal operation if pointer-arithmetic is avoided, right? Feel free to give your thoughts on these in terms of microcontrollers or low-cost microprocessors. [1] http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Files/orgs/ENGR/Research/CSDS/2014/A%20New%20Operating%20System%20for%20Security%20Tagged%20Architecture%20Hardware%20in%20Support%20of%20Multiple%20Independent%20Levels%20of%20Security%202014.ashx http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Files/orgs/ENGR/Research/CSDS/... [2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/skeckler/pubs/asplos94.pdf https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/skeckler/pubs/asplos94.pdf [3] http://www.crash-safe.org/assets/PUMP-ASPLOS-2015.pdf http://www.crash-safe.org/assets/PUMP-ASPLOS-2015.pdf

schoen 11y ago

This is a neat idea, nicely presented. The proposal appeals to a wide audience by explaining the defensive significance of the tools it asks participants to develop. Is there any reason to think that people who were directly or indirectly involved in proposing this challenging are also interested in offensive applications, and chose not to talk about them?

irl_zebra 11y ago
>> Is there any reason to think that people who were directly or indirectly involved in proposing this challenging are also interested in offensive applications, and chose not to talk about them? Yes, the competition is run by DARPA.
avoutthere 11y ago
> nicely presented I couldn't disagree more.
- schoen 11y ago
  Sorry, I didn't actually go through the entire scrolling graphics thing, I just read the explanation of the idea. I'll agree that that part didn't add to my understanding and I didn't intend to praise it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

daveloyall 11y ago

> The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

fapjacks 11y ago

Jesus. This site hurts to use. What's with the UI pigeonholing?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tim333 11y ago
Plus it was using about 30% CPU for the one page.

fapjacks 11y ago

Or, less formally, the "Build An Internet That Pwns Itself For The Government" contest.

daveloyall 11y ago
I read it as the "Build an Auto-Pwner for the Government" contest.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  Yes, in the immediate sense of the story, you're right. But when I look into my crystal ball, I see so many of these machines running continually that it becomes an internet that hands control of itself to the US government (and any of our "allies" paying the ante of, say, forty F-35s, or whatever newfangled hardware they build to burn up on the runway).
ENGNR 11y ago
Pwning is easy for a skilled attacker vs an unskilled defender (the current situation). With the focus on automatic evaluating and healing, it could seriously help out unskilled defenders.
colinthompson 11y ago
Where would silicon valley, and the world in general, be without DARPA? Not that I am trying to support any big brother agenda, but it's hard to deny that your smartphone and computer owe at least some part of their existence to efforts on the part of the US defense budget. Again, I am not trying to take sides, I just find it shortsighted to cast a disapproving eye on government projects....or at least funding.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  You are reading words that aren't there. I didn't actually say whether or not I thought that was a bad thing.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

facepalm 11y ago

I suppose the challenge is to read through the site and successfully extract it's meaning?

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Lmao. My initial reaction exactly. DARPA's writers are usually better than this if it's something open to the public. Other times, they do it on purpose. Maybe they got mixed up on which style to use.

jmgrosen 11y ago

I'm on a team that will be participating in the upcoming qualifier for the finals. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the challenge (that I know the answers to), though not any about our specific techniques ;)

plantbased 11y ago
For the love of god give us all the TL;DR, the site is awful.

bahador 11y ago

Please let's all agree that scroll-jacking must die.

frik 11y ago

TL;DR: It's about the "Internet of Things" It's a buzzword with an vision that can have a positive but also a negative outcome for our society. For example: The nest thermostat learns your behavior and selects your favorite temperature depending the day of time, the ambient light, ... it learns with you - and actually helps to save you energy. The opposite is a "smart meter" forced on you by new regulations that isn't smart at all and doesn't help you to save energy but sends your power usage data (your private life data) in regular intervals over the net to the usual data collectors. Another example: All Ford automobiles that come with the Sync board computer (2008-2015, Windows CE based) can be optionally set to do the following in the event of a crash (at the time when the airbags go off): use your phone connected via Bluetooth, set a call to the international emergency hotline, speak via the Nuance Text-To-Speech software an emergency text including your current position (car have an inbuilt GPS antenna) and open the microphone so that you can talk with the emergency hotline or at least they can hear the audio if you are unable to speak. On the otherside, some lobbies try to propose in the US/EU a new law where every car has to share its location and some other "metadata" in a short interval (as soon as you turn on your motor) to a central data collector - so that in the event of an accident they know where you are, as they say. Decide yourself which version of the "Internet of Things" vision you want to have in your everyday life.

darkmighty 11y ago
The nest thermostat is a completely different device from an utility smart meter. For example, I can see smart meters helping provide real time data to the utility about power usage. Utilities are engaged in an enormous task of forescating power demand, which is probably much harder than weather forecasting even (as that is a subtask of demand forecasting!) -- and can net huge savings for the companies; or allowing more fair pricing schemes that discourage usage in times of high demand; etc. That's a real benefit for society. I don't think there's a need to put a tin foil hat and demand that all personally identifiable information collection be ceased. We instead just have to make sure this info is getting used properly (within the designated scope) with according security for each problem. In other words: scrutiny, not celibacy.
- 11y ago