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Cost Estimating NewsBrief: August 16, 2024
DARPA edges closer to using AI to expose cyber vulnerabilities
(NextGov/FCW) The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Sunday selected seven teams to advance to the final stage of a U.S.-sponsored cybersecurity competition, where they will be tasked to finalize an AI-powered system designed to secure open-source software that underpins many critical infrastructure sectors, like banks and water systems. The top seven scoring teams, who were each awarded $2 million for their work at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas, will have one year to build upon their systems before the DARPA-backed AI Cyber Challenge — or AIxCC — finale is held at next year’s DEF CON. Read More
Jen Easterly Says Federal Computer Software Manufacturing Should Improve
(Executive Gov) Due to a recent surge of cybersecurity infiltrations, Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, believes the technology industry must advance computer software manufacturing processes to better protect against such attacks, CyberScoop reported Friday. The 2024 Wash100 awardee relayed her beliefs during the Black Hat security conference on Thursday. Easterly said, “We don’t have a cybersecurity problem. We have a software quality problem.” “We have a multi-billion dollar cybersecurity industry because for decades, technology vendors have been allowed to create defective, insecure, flawed software,” Easterly added. Read More
Canada Builds F-35 Facility For NORAD Missions | Finland/Latvia Award Patria CAVS Deal | Sierra Nevada To Restore Uzbekistan Pilatus PC-12
(Defense Industry Daily) Boeing won a $264 million deal, which provides inspections, modifications, and repairs to the F/A-18 E/F and EA-18G aircrafts to include inner wing panel repairs in support of remanufacturing efforts to restore the inner wing panel service life projections to the new design specifications. Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. The Canadian Department of Defense started construction of a Quick Reaction Alert facility at the Bagotville base in Quebec. The site will house Ottawa’s future F-35A combat aircraft fleet and support North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) operations in partnership with the US military. Read More
The Higgs particle could break physics throughout the universe. Here’s why it hasn’t.
(Space.com) Although our universe may seem stable, having existed for a whopping 13.7 billion years, several experiments suggest that it is at risk — walking on the edge of a very dangerous cliff. And it’s all down to the instability of a single fundamental particle: the Higgs boson. In new research by me and my colleagues, just accepted for publication in Physical Letters B, we show that some models of the early universe, those which involve objects called light primordial black holes, are unlikely to be right because they would have triggered the Higgs boson to end the cosmos by now. Read More
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