American researchers have found they can use mathematical formulas to segment huge populations into thousands of subgroups according to defining characteristics like religion and political beliefs or taste in TV shows and music. When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow’s hackers to take control of the victim’s phone or computer–and Twitter account. Depending on the interests of the targets, the messages offered links to stories on recent sporting events or the Oscars, which had taken place the previous weekend. The report said the Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department. Now the Russians were running a more sophisticated hack on Twitter. It described how Russia had already moved on from the rudimentary email hacks against politicians it had used in 2016. But the report in early March was something new. and suburban Virginia, they had created massive wall charts to track the different players in Russia’s multipronged scheme.
For months, American spy hunters had scrambled to uncover details of Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 presidential election. counterintelligence officials in Washington. It was smart.On March 2, a disturbing report hit the desks of U.S. It weighed the benefits of patching and exploiting against the costs.
War robots hack 2016 Patch#
Mayhem didn't just patch and exploit security holes. Over the remaining rounds, Mayhem's patches continued to provide defense, and though it wasn't able to patch additional holes or exploit new holes in other machines, enough of its services continued to run as they should-in part because it had often decided not to patch. Its play in the first 50 rounds was so good, its game theory so successful, that the other bots couldn't catch up. In round 96, it won the contest-at least according to preliminary results. And then just as suddenly, in round 95, it started working again. And it was top after round 90-even though it remained dormant. And a second bot, Jima, designed by a two person team from Idaho, successfully patched the bug.Īnd yet, Mayhem stayed atop the leader board. At one point, Xandra-a bot designed by a team from the University of Virginia and a company called GrammaTech-exploited a bug that Darpa didn't even know was there. And round 70.Īs the game continued, others bots showed a surprising knack for the task at hand. And it remained dormant through round 60. For some reason, it could no longer submit patches or attempt exploits against other machines. This disc included all the data needed to show what was happening inside the machines, and after the arm fed this into a system on the other side of the gap, Darpa's Tron-like visualization appeared on the giant TV looming over the arena. Then, every so often, a robotic arm would grab a Blue-Ray disc from the supercomputer side and move it across the gap. To show that no one else had access to the seven supercomputers-that the bots really were competing on their own-Darpa erected its network so that an obvious air gap sat between the machines and the rest of the ballroom. Darpa awarded points not just for finding bugs, but for keeping services up and running. Each bot aimed to patch the holes on its own machine, while working to prove it could exploit holes on others.
War robots hack 2016 software#
Each supercomputer launched software that no one outside Darpa had ever seen, and the seven bots looked for holes. The seven teams loaded their autonomous systems onto the seven supercomputers late last week, and sometime Thursday morning, Darpa set the contest in motion. "Anybody who does vulnerability research will find that surprising." "That was astounding," said Mike Walker, the veteran white-hat hacker who oversaw the contest. Until yesterday, this seemed beyond the reach of anything other than a human. Their performance surprised and impressed some security veterans, including the organizers of this $55 million contest-and those who designed the bots.ĭuring the contest, which played out over a matter of hours, one bot proved it could find and exploit a particularly subtle security hole similar to one that plagued the world's email systems a decade ago-the Crackaddr bug. Designed by seven teams of security researchers from across academia and industry, the bots were asked to play offense and defense, fixing security holes in their own machines while exploiting holes in the machines of others.
The Paris ballroom played host to the Darpa Cyber Grand Challenge, the first hacking contest to pit bot against bot-rather than human against human. Last night, at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, seven autonomous bots proved that hacking isn't just for humans.
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