Two of DARPA’s cybersecurity programs are Clean-slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) and Programming Computation on Encrypted Data (PROCEED). The CRASH cybersecurity program is aimed at developing a Department of Defense computer network resistant to cyberattacks. After initial attacks, the system would learn and adapt ways to fight future attacks.
CRASH grew out of a workshop DARPA held earlier this year in which cybersecurity and operating-system experts got together with infectious-disease biologists, explained Kaigham Gabriel of DARPA.
In an interview with the Armed Forces Press Service, Gabriel said that some interesting cybersecurity ideas came out of the workshop. One was that because bodies are genetically diverse, viruses or bacteria that infect one body won't necessarily infect all others, or infect them in the same way.
This applies to computer vulnerabilities because most computer hardware is built the same way, Gabriel said. "The idea is to look at the structure of computers, which are identical and have no security in the hardware...because performance was king 15 or 20 years ago. Transistors and computer performance were precious and you didn't give up any of it to security. Now, the world is different."
Today, security could be added to computer hardware, giving computers diversity that would make them less vulnerable to cyber infections, he explained.
The PROCEED cybersecurity program is working to develop a process that would enable working on encrypted data without having to decrypt it first.
"Encryption is one way of protecting things, but if you want to operate on encrypted data, process it, do something with it, you have to decrypt it first. You operate on it while it's in a decrypted state, then take your result, encrypt that again and send it on," Gabriel said.
Recently, researchers have demonstrated that it was possible to work on encrypted data. “That's the good news. The bad news is, it's very inefficient right now; 12 orders of magnitude less efficient than it needs to be", he said.
PROCEED is working to improve that efficiency. "If we were able to do relevant sorts of operations without ever having to decrypt, that would be a tremendous gain because...whenever you decrypt into the open, you create vulnerability", Gabriel concluded.