US's DARPA developing technology to identify and track hackers worldwide

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United States developing new tech to identify and track cyber criminals and hackers

The United States administration has recognised the fact that to stay ahead of hackers and cyber criminals it needs long term sustainable program. Without such a program and analytic tools, it would be impossible to hunt down the new threats emerging on the horizon. Therefore, Defense Advanced Projects Agency which is popularly known as DARPA and the technology arm of Pentagon has come up with a new program called Enhanced Attribution Program.

The defence administration and Pentagon want a better way to not only identify the malicious hacker but also looking for practical algorithms that can predict where that hacker might attack next.In order to fulfill this goal, DARPA is offering funding for security researchers who can help the agency to develop algorithms that can identify hackers under ‘Enhanced Attribution Program’.

With new methods of cyber attacks and hackings being devised everyday, DARPA has thought it prudent to include the security researchers and ethical hackers in this program. Through this new initiative, the United States military research agency DARPA hopes that agencies would quickly track and identify sophisticated hackers or criminal groups by monitoring their exact behavior and physical biometrics.

DARPA says that the aim of Enhanced Attribution program is to track personas continuously and create “algorithms for developing predictive behavioral profiles.”

“The goal of the Enhanced Attribution (EA) program is to develop technologies for generating operationally and tactically relevant information about multiple concurrent independent malicious cyber campaigns, each involving several operators; and the means to share such information with any of a number of interested parties without putting at risk the sources and methods used for collection,” reads the project’s official site.

In other words, the Enhanced Attribution Program will not only help the government characterize the cyber criminal but also share the criminal’s modus operandi with potential victims and predict the attacker’s next target. DARPA also wants the program to include algorithms to predictive behavioral profiles within the context of cyber campaigns, as well as technologies to validate and improve this knowledge base with public and commercial sources of information.

The program is divided into three tracks:

Behavior and Activity Tracking and Summarization
Fusion and Predictive Analysis
Validation and Enrichment

Each track deals with different levels of behavior data collection and analysis.

The Enhanced Attribution Program will last 18 months. If you are a security researcher or ethical hacker who is interested in predictive analysis, EAP is the program for you. If you dont mind working with the United States, you can submit your research proposal until June 7, 2016.

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