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ASU team wins big at the world’s largest hacker convention
DEF CON brings some of the world’s most talented cybersecurity wizards into the Las Vegas desert each year to scour software, hardware and networking equipment in search of vulnerabilities. The world’s largest hacker convention, DEF CON operates under the principle that the best way to secure computer code is to expose it. At the 2024 convention, the 25-person Shellphish team of “hackademics” from ASU; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Purdue University won $2 million in prize money during the semifinal round of the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge, also known as AlxCC.
DARPA hosts the AIxCC competition at DEF CON to spur the development of a cybersecurity system powered by artificial intelligence. The Shellphish team participated in the competition with a novel cyber reasoning system called ARTIPHISHELL, developed by ASU researchers.
ARTIPHISHELL can automatically analyze the code that runs a piece of software, correct any security vulnerabilities found and then retest the system.
Because of its objective to protect hospitals, pharmacies and medical devices from cyberattacks, the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) also collaborated on the competition and expanded the prize pool.
ARTIPHISHELL is a giant leap toward achieving our vision of humans working alongside AI to keep our software safe. Addressing critical cybersecurity challenges will require us to invent new paradigms of collaboration between the human and digital world.
— Yan Shoshitaishvili, associate professor at ASU’s School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence and Shellphish team member
DEF CON Academy upskills hacker community
ASU has been a mainstay of DEF CON for years, with faculty organizing its Capture the Flag competition. Now, ASU is furthering its ties with the community through DEF CON Academy, a skillbased learning network led by the Global Security Initiative. While the hands-on nature of Capture the Flag is invaluable, it only occurs one weekend out of the year. DEF CON Academy provides learning experiences all year long and bolsters the strong hacker community that attends DEF CON.
