Award Data

In the Phase I and II efforts on Galois' Attack Sensitive Brittle Software (Brittle) SBIR project, we implemented Software Fault Enhancement (SFE), a binary modification technique for improving the robustness of existing binary code, without requiring access to source code or other documentation.  This work is promising enough that the toolset is now being commercialized.  On this sequential Pha ...

The vision of the CAMDEN project has been to explore the use of mechanism design as a solution to effectively incentivize and accelerate collaboration in critical DoD domains. Our Phase II goal is to “make it real” by building one or more deployable mechanism design solutions, demonstrating in a very tangible way how mechanism design can benefit the DoD. In the 8-month Phase 1 effort, we aimed ...

The objective of this study will be to develop technologies for recompiling legacy binaries to the secure CHERI ISA in support of DoD modernization priorities. Doing this would enable upgrading DoD systems processors and software by ruling out several important categories of security vulnerability that are possible on legacy architectures. However, recompilation is inherently a very difficult task ...

Due to exponential growth in complexity, current hardware designs cannot be thoroughly tested, which leads to significant hardware vulnerabilities reaching the field. Recent innovations in Model-Based Engineering (MBE) provide information flow analysis results that can be used to drive design state space partitioning – separating the design into multiple, individually verifiable portions – bas ...

The Generating Requirements Evidence with Analysis and System-level Enforcement (GREASE) project will develop a static binary verifier that generates evidence that COTS software components satisfy their requirements. The GREASE tool will accelerate both (1) the safe and high-assurance integration of COTS components into systems, and (2) the generation of assurance cases for the certification of sy ...

To enhance U.S. Navy operations, a technology platform will be developed for fabricating environmentally robust, visible through near-infrared (NIR) band transparent, tapered resistivity films. After refining the operational requirements and updating the device design models, a design trade study will be performed using the measured electrical (i.e., conductivity) and optical (i.e., spectral trans ...

This project aims to strengthen the cybersecurity of edge computers used by special operation forces warfighters. Our team has developed a novel approach for edge computer security called CyberShield that implements hardware obfuscation to detect and defeat cyberattacks. By obscuring the edge computing hardware, an attacker can never write effective malware because they do not know the target inst ...

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BioSqueeze, Inc. (BSI) proposes using microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) to meet DARPA’s SBIR program objective of “pushing the utility of biological cement derived from living organisms to produce hardened surfaces in semi-aquatic environments.” Our MICP technology will reduce the effects of beach erosion and greatly improve the ability of vehicles to transition from ...

The overall vision of the CAMDEN project is to explore the use of mechanism design as a solution to incentivize the creation of collaborative API designs for the DoD.  APIs are not merely software interfaces: they enable a decentralized marketplace of services. It would be highly desirable to apply this decentralized API-driven approach to DoD missions. We believe the barriers to this vision are ...