Many of you might have heard of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For those that haven"t, it"s the research and development division of the USD Department of Defense. Today, Microsoft announced a new partnership with DARPA to help the contestants for its current AI Cyber Challenge.
The contest"s official website describes the rules and the prize of this challenge. Basically, it is a two-year event that asks the top minds in AI and cybersecurity to design systems that are meant to safeguard critical infrastructure for the United States.
In Microsoft"s blog, the company describes its involvement in the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge. It will allow the contestants to use the latest AI models via its Azure cloud services.
Microsoft adds:
Innovation with AI and cybersecurity is even more important for areas like critical infrastructure where the stakes are the highest. We’ve observed increasing infrastructure attacks in locations such as Ukraine where our threat intelligence teams had tracked multiple waves of cyberattacks. We’re putting this learning into action by supporting the AI Cyber Challenge to help the nation protect critical infrastructure, spanning financial systems to public utilities, from cyber threats.
Microsoft will give those teams up to $150,000 worth of Azure credits, along with $200,000 worth of Microsoft business products.
The two-year competition will be held in two phases. The first phase will conclude at the 2024 DEF CON security conference, which will be held in Las Vegas on August 8-11. At that time, DARPA will pick the top seven teams to become semi-finalists. Each of those teams will be awarded $2 million.
Those seven teams will then enter the second and final phase of the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge. The final winners will be revealed at the 2025 DEF CON conference. The winning team will get $4 million, The second-place team will receive $3 million, and the third-place team will get $1.5 million.