No Luck Needed, Georgia Tech Group Competes in DARPA AI Challenge in Las Vegas

A Georgia Tech contingent will be among the hustle and bustle of the Las Vegas strip, hoping to win millions not by gambling, but by hacking.

Georgia Tech students, faculty, and alumni are part of a team heading west this week to compete at this year’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) Semifinal Competition. AIxCC is being held at DEF CON 32, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity conferences.

Team Atlanta is a 25-member group representing Georgia Tech, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), New York University (NYU), the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), and Samsung Research.

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Taesoo Kim, professor in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and a vice president of Samsung Research, helped organize the team, which includes current and past Ph.D. students from his lab. 

“Team Atlanta boasts an exceptional history of engaging in high-risk, high-reward reward research,” said Kim. “This is evidenced by their contributions to over 200 papers at prestigious security conferences, victories at the world’s largest hacking competitions, and presentations at both DEF CON and Black Hat USA.”

Each team has developed an AI tool, known as a cyber reasoning system (CRS), that automatically identifies and fixes common software vulnerabilities in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods. To test each team’s CRS, DARPA has created challenge projects containing common and uncommon software vulnerabilities. 

Team Atlanta’s CRS will scan each project to detect the vulnerabilities before creating and implementing software patches. The goal is ensuring the fixes do not interfere with the software’s functionality or security.

DARPA will grade the CRS on the variety of software patches it deploys and how accurately they are deployed. The speed and quality of the repair are also graded as part of the competition. 

“DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge will ask the best and brightest in AI and cybersecurity to defend the software on which all Americans rely,” said Perri Adams, a special assistant to the director at DARPA, as part of the challenge announcement. “This is an opportunity to use the technology to make a real, tractable difference, to build something that can achieve dramatic structural change.”

The Pentagon-backed initiative was announced in August 2023 and will award up to $20 million in prize money throughout the competition. Team Atlanta was among the 40 teams that qualified for the semi-final competition earlier this year. The top teams from the semi-final round will each receive $2 million and will move on the final competition, which will be held at DEF CON in August 2025.