The FIRE program seeks to develop transformative tools to find, exploit, and patch vulnerabilities in medium-complexity cyberphysical systems (CPS) within a month from when the physical system is delivered to the analysis team.
FIRE is primarily interested in cyber-physical vulnerabilities (CPV), ones that arise from the composition of hardware, software, and physical components where each component may not be vulnerable in-and-of itself.
The FIRE program seeks to develop innovative tools that can scale automated vulnerability analysis beyond software systems and into CPS by overcoming the preparation, modeling, and simulation technical challenges.
DARPA strongly prefers proposals that respond to either all of Technical Area 1 through Technical Area 4 or Technical Area 5. However individual proposals to TA1, TA2, TA3, or TA4, will also be considered if sufficient funding is available.
Technical Areas
- Modelling – develop tools that can model entire systems (to include hardware, software, and physical) with enough fidelity to find, exploit, and patch vulnerabilities, and are fast enough to meet the overall one-month program goal.
- Simulation – develop simulators that have enough precision to model interactions between system components and are fast enough to meet the overall program goals.
- Preparation – develop tools that reduce the amount of time needed to prepare a system for analysis to include techniques to accurately identify components, connections, and/or board layouts.
- Integration – create the FIRE tool(s) that meet the overall one-month program metric by integrating TA1, TA2, and TA3 solutions
- Engineering Support Task – work with government and Independent
Verification and Validation (IV&V) teams to develop representative medium-complexity
CPS with full data rights for TA1, TA2, TA3, and TA4 performers to test, evaluate, and demonstrate their solutions.
FIRE is a 42 month, two-phase program covering the five Technical Areas.
– Abstracts due 31 March; full proposals due 19 May 2023
