DARPA targets complex software algorithm vulnerabilities

Talk about finding a needle in a haystack.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency says it wants to develop sophisticated code that can find faults in key algorithms used to anchor major software packages that for example implement hash tables or conduct password checks.

“As new defensive technologies make old classes of vulnerability difficult to exploit successfully, adversaries move to new classes of vulnerability. Vulnerabilities based on flawed implementations of algorithms have been popular targets for many years. However, once new defensive technologies make vulnerabilities based on flawed implementations less common and more difficult to exploit, adversaries will turn their attention to vulnerabilities inherent in the algorithms themselves,” DARPA stated.