Pittsburgh-area team wins DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge

A Pittsburgh-based team of cyber researchers achieved the top spot at the Defense Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC), the world’s first all-hacking tournament, on Thursday.

The CGC is the first fully-automated computer security challenge, with teams coming from all over the U.S. to compete. The competition was developed to accelerate the advancement of autonomous systems that can identify and patch software vulnerabilities before adversaries can exploit any weak points. The tournament was held at the Paris Las Vegas Conference Center in front of approximately 5,000 computer security professionals.

The winning team, ForAllSecure, claimed the top spot after besting six other teams of researchers with their Mayhem computer AI system.

After winning the CGC, ForAllSecure was formally invited to the DEF CON Capture the Flag competition held through the weekend. Their historic win marked the first time a machine was able to compete in an historically all-human tournament.

“I’m enormously gratified that we achieved CGC’s primary goal, which was to provide clear proof of principle that machine-speed, scalable cyber defense is indeed possible,” Mike Walker, program manager at DARPA, said. “The effort by the teams, the DARPA leadership and staff, and all the hundreds of people who helped make this unique, open-to-the-public test happen was enormous. I’m confident it will speed the day when networked attackers no longer have the inherent advantage they enjoy today.”