Video: Highlights from DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge
DARPA
In a battle of machines, who won?
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that ForAllSecure is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
After years of preparation and qualifying rounds, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Cyber Grand Challenge finally reached its conclusion. Seven teams from around the country, and the autonomous computer systems they each built, competed in a series of bug-hunting contests to win some serious cash prizes. This event was the first of its kind, and took nearly 10 hours.
So how did they do? Pretty well. One team even managed to discover an unintended vulnerability.
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"Today, we saw machines patch many of the vulnerabilities that were activated in their software, within minutes, without damaging software or availability," said Mike Walker, the DARPA program manager who originally launched the challenge in 2013.
Ultimately, team ForAllSecure, a startup cybersecurity company based in Pittsburgh, and its computer system Mayhem took home the grand prize of $2 million.
To learn more, check out the highlights of the event from DARPA below: