The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the teams that will receive approximately $4 million in total cash awards as the presumptive winners in its cyber defense tournament.
DARPA said Thursday the ForAllSecure research team will receive $2 million for the group’s Mayhem computer system that landed first place in the preliminary results of the Cyber Grand Challenge.
The department also named the TECHx team’s Xandra and Shellphish’s Mechanical Phish systems as second- and third-place winners with cash awards worth $1 million and $750,000, respectively.
Seven teams comprised of white-hat hackers, academics and private-sector experts competed in the challenge, where automated systems worked to detect and patch flawed code and discover opponents’ vulnerabilities.
DARPA said the Cyber Grand Challenge aims to support the development of autonomous systems that can detect, evaluate and patch software vulnerabilities to prevent hacking.
Winners will be awarded at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas before the start of the DEF CON hacker tournament, where Mayhem is set to become the first machine player in the all-human “capture the flag” competition, DARPA added.
