DARPA Looking at Monitoring Analog Signals for Cyber Intrusion Detection

In-brief: DARPA is directing $36m for the first stage of a program called LADS – Leveraging the Analog Domain for Security, which is looking into analog methods of cyber threat detection, including power consumption monitoring.

Frustrated by adversaries continued success at circumventing or defeating cyber defense and monitoring technologies, DARPA is looking to fund new approaches, including the monitoring of analog that don’t rely on traditional on-device or on-network monitoring.

DARPA, the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, issued a call for “innovative research proposals” for the Leveraging the Analog Domain for Security (LADS) Program on September 25. The program is directing $36 million into developing “enhanced cyber defense through analysis of involuntary analog emissions,” including things like “electromagnetic emissions, acoustic emanations, power fluctuations and thermal output variations.”

The goal, according to a DARPA document describing the program (PDF), is to “develop new cybersecurity capabilities by exploring the intersection of the analog and digital domains” and to extend monitoring to a category of devices that are often unprotected. These are what DARPA refers to as EMSDs – or “embedded and mission-specific devices.”

LInk.