The Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales (ADAMS) program creates, adapts and applies technology to anomaly characterization and detection in massive data sets. Anomalies in data cue the collection of additional, actionable information in a wide variety of real world contexts. The initial application domain is insider threat detection in which malevolent (or possibly inadvertent) actions by a trusted individual are detected against a background of everyday network activity.
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To be effective, Department of Defense (DoD) cybersecurity solutions require rapid development times. The shelf life of systems and capabilities is sometimes measured in days. Thus, to a greater degree than in other areas of defense, cybersecurity solutions require that DoD develops the ability to build quickly, at scale and over a broad range of capabilities.
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The Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) program will pursue innovative research into the design of new computer systems that are highly resistant to cyber-attack, can adapt after a successful attack to continue rendering useful services, learn from previous attacks how to guard against and cope with future attacks, and can repair themselves after attacks have succeeded. Exploitable vulnerabilities originate from a handful of known sources (e.g., memory safety); they remain because of deficits in tools, languages and hardware that could address and prevent vulnerabilities at the design, implementation and execution stages.
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Unreliable software places huge costs on both the military and the civilian economy. Currently, most Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software contains about one to five bugs per thousand lines of code. Formal verification of software provides the most confidence that a given piece of software is free of errors that could disrupt military and government operations. Unfortunately, traditional formal verification methods do not scale to the size of software found in modern computer systems. Formal verification also currently requires highly specialized engineers with deep knowledge of software technology and mathematical theorem-proving techniques.
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Embedded systems form a ubiquitous, networked, computing substrate that underlies much of modern technological society. Such systems range from large supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that manage physical infrastructure to medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps, to computer peripherals such as printers and routers, to communication devices such as cell phones and radios, to vehicles such as airplanes and satellites. Such devices have been networked for a variety of reasons, including the ability to conveniently access diagnostic information, perform software updates, provide innovative features, lower costs, and improve ease of use.
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