August 2014 Newsletter: Michigan DARPA MD.MFP: "MD.MFP at DEF CON 22"

Mac-OU INC’s Michigan Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Matching Funds Program (MD.MFP) Market Development Manager, Stacey Frankovich, recently attended DEF CON 22, the world’s largest annual hacker convention. Since 1993, DEF CON has invaded Las Vegas with a strong following of computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers and hackers. MD.MFP is seeking to assist Michigan teams participating in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) through MD.MFP-designated Challenge Funding Support. Therefore, this was the ideal promotion location for Michigan-based competitors. In addition, immersing oneself in the target market was an eye-opening learning opportunity.

At DEF CON 22, Stacey met with Michael Walker, DARPA Program Manager (PM) and creator/operator of the DARPA CGC. PM Walker conveyed that the purpose of the CGC is to look to innovation to solve cyber-security problems by using autonomous systems. There is a strong need for a “virtual workforce” to identify and fix issues before they become major problems, mainly due to the current lack of workforce available to monitor the massive amounts of code. The CGC is expected to bring the finest hackers, industry experts and academia together into teams, culminating in a live capture-the-flag competition at DEF CON 24 in 2016.

All Michigan cyber-patriots from academia, small business and industry are invited to team-up and compete in the CGC with potential support from MD.MFP. The challenge’s final winning team receives a cash prize of $2 million, with second place earnings of $1 million and third place taking home $750,000. Team applications are accepted through November 2, 2014.

The Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) via the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) selected Mac-OU INC to administer MD.MFP for the entire State of Michigan. The primary objective of the program is to assist early-stage technologies along a path of commercialization while increasing the amount of federally sponsored (DARPA) research and development funding that comes into Michigan.

For more information, view the MD.MFP Cyber Grand Challenge flier.