Red Team versus the Agents
At a nuclear weapons lab, a team of elite hackers matches wits with undefeated autonomous defenders
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--By the time my escort steers me past the armed guards, key-coded doors, and bags of shredded paper into the heart of Sandia National Laboratories, the rematch has already begun. Inside the Advanced Information Systems Lab, six men sit around a large table loaded with laptops and network cables, which snake over to a rack of high-powered machines labeled BORG SERVER CLUSTER. These men are the defense--the Blue Team in this high-tech version of capture the flag--and they lean back in their chairs confidently. This past March, they claim, their "agents"--computer programs that autonomously cooperate to protect a networked system--became the first defenders ever to thwart Sandia's esteemed Red Team of professional hackers. But that was in a two-day skirmish. Now Steven Y. Goldsmith, the research group's lead scientist, has invited the Red Team to spend this entire we