Def Con Hackers Ready AI Fixes To Critical Health-Care Flaws

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

AIxCC is the two-year competition that DARPA announced last summer at Black Hat which challenges teams to build AI-based tools that automatically secure code used in critical infrastructure.

The new government agency partner is the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an independent research entity within the US National Institutes of Health.

By joining forces with the Pentagon's research arm, ARPA-H aims to promote the development of AI-based tech that can find and fix critical vulnerabilities in medical devices, biotech, and hospital IT systems, thus preventing destructive cyberattacks against life-saving equipment and facilities.

"Healthcare is both acutely being targeted, and it's been more and more targeted over the last few years," ARPA-H program manager Andrew Carney told The Register. "It's also uniquely sensitive to disruptions compared to many other critical infrastructure sectors."

[...] Most of America witnessed this first hand over the past month as a ransomware infection shuttered Change Healthcare's IT systems in February, knocking many pharmacies offline and preventing patients from receiving medication and other care.

"While the repercussions of this incident have been primarily - though not wholly - financial, what keeps me up at night is the possibility of a similar widespread attack directly affecting patient care and safety," US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said earlier this month.

[...] This is where DARPA, partnering with APRA-H, comes into play to boost AI-enabled technology to secure healthcare systems - and sweeten the monetary rewards.

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