Computer scientists are very close to developing a computer code that will not be breached by Hacker
With the aim of protecting devices from attacks, engineers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) have worked on a new type of security mechanism – a software system that cannot be breached.
To test the security mechanism, DARPA gave the “Red Team” hackers six weeks to try to take control of an unmanned military helicopter, built by a company known as “Little Birds.” They also gave the team additional information about computer . However, they were unable to crack Little Bird’s defense code.
«They were not able to infiltrate and disrupt the operation in any way», said Kathleen Fisher, a computer science professor at Tufts University and director of the High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) program. «This result made everyone at DARPA say: oh my God, we can actually use this technology in systems that interest us.»
The computer code that underlies the hardware was essentially unbreakable with current technology, reports WIRED. The report notes that the code is “as reliable as a mathematical proof.” The programming approach is known as formal verification and is evaluated primarily with respect to whether it works. Each statement logically follows the next. A set of the program can be checked with the same confidence that mathematicians can prove its theorems.
«Write a mathematical formula that describes the behavior of the program and uses some kind of verifier that is going to check the correctness of the statement» said Bryan Parno, who conducts research on formal verification and security at Microsoft Research.
Since most of the attacks are done by exploiting bugs and errors in the code, it becomes necessary to have an official confirmation that it is inviolable. With this approach, the codes that have undergone this process are assumed to be inaccessible. Once the code works, it leaves no loopholes for Hackers to exploit.
The code is still in the early stages and requires a lot of work and testing to be completed.
