The Air Force's geek squad wants the technology to monitor government employees' deviant online behavior. And they want you to build it.
Today, the Air Force issued a call for proposals from small businesses, with this objective: "Define, develop, and demonstrate innovative approaches for determining 'good' (approved) versus 'bad' (disallowed/subversive) activities, including insiders and/or malware."
But taboo activity could span everything from leaking top secret information to spamming contacts with a chain letter to visiting any site that government officials deem dubious. Previously, they've said some interesting things about social networking, which may or may not influence what they'd do with new tools.
Now, those tools are a ways away. Current methods to detect insider breaches of cyber security "only address the most blatant violations of policy or the grossest deviations from accepted behavior," according to the Air Force request. The cyber security system works mostly by rejecting certain predefined digital signatures at the borders of the network. But, as the Air Force request pointed out, people with inside access are more familiar with the security system and best know how to thwart it.
Not everyone who jeopardizes security does it intentionally. The Air Force also wants the algorithm to flag unwitting security breaches like opening an infected site during research.
Get cracking if you want to help root out the deviants. The technology needs to be ready to test nine months from now, and you'll be compensated up to $100,000 for your troubles.
[Photo: Whitehouse.gov]
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