Professor Yun Insu’s Lab (as a Part of Team Atlanta) Advances to Finals of the U.S. DARPA ‘AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC)’ and Secures $2 Million in Research Funding
<Professor Insu Yun>
Team Atlanta, which includes Professor Yun Insu’s lab, successfully advanced to the finals of the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) held in Las Vegas, USA, from August 10 to 11. The team has secured $2 million (approximately 2.7 billion KRW) in research funding.
AIxCC is a competition where teams pit their AI-based Cyber Reasoning Systems (CRS) against each other. DARPA’s challenges include embedding vulnerabilities in real software such as Linux, and each team’s CRS was tasked with automatically analyzing the software to identify and patch these vulnerabilities. DARPA then evaluated each CRS based on the number and variety of vulnerabilities discovered, the accuracy of the patches, and other factors.
Out of 91 registered teams and 39 participating teams in the preliminary round, Team Atlanta was selected as one of the seven teams advancing to the finals.
Team Atlanta consists of members from KAIST, Georgia Tech, NYU, POSTECH, and Samsung Research.
Notably, Team Atlanta’s CRS achieved a remarkable feat by discovering a new vulnerability in the famous software sqlite3, which was not initially intended by the challenge organizers. This achievement is seen as a significant milestone, demonstrating the potential of AI to bring innovation to the field of cybersecurity, aligning well with the goals of AIxCC.
As a result of their success, Team Atlanta has been awarded $2 million in research funding and will advance to the final competition, which will take place at DEF CON in August 2025, where the ultimate winner will be determined
