Autonomous Bots: It’s All About Scale

By David Brumley

David Brumley is the Bosch Security and Privacy Professor at CMU, the Director of CyLab, the CMU Security and Privacy, a Professor in ECE with an appointment in CS, and a founding member and academic advisor for a world ranked competitive hacking team. His research interests include all areas of security, with a specialization in software security. Brumley's honors include a United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Obama, a 2013 Sloan Foundation award and numerous best paper awards. Brumley's security startup ForAllSecure won the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge that tested fully autonomous full-spectrum attack and defense cyber reasoning systems.

Many view cybersecurity as passively blocking attempts to breach networks, but security experts have long advocated more active measures in defense of sensitive networks. Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning could make such efforts scalable to the vast connectivity of the modern age. The Cipher Brief spoke with David Brumley, Director of CyLab and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, about the advent of autonomous hacking bots and the impact they could have in actively defending networks against cybercriminals and nation-states alike.

The Cipher Brief: What is active defense?

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