The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) program to weaponize the Internet of Things (IoT) involves the "Cyber Grand Challenge" (CGC) whose finals will be held Aug. 4 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The finals of CGC, an international tournament DARPA calls the "world's first automated network defense tournament," will involve seven U.S. teams that will pit their machines against each other to uncover vulnerabilities that might exist in the IoT. DARPA also bills CGC as "The World's First All-Machine Hacking Tournament."

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DARPA believes that important connected infrastructure in the U.S. such as traffic lights and power grids might be susceptible to cyberattacks by hostile states or individual hackers and hacking groups. It said the aim of its CGC is to speed-up the development of automated security systems able to defend against cyberattacks as fast as they are launched. The machines making the fixes must perform as well as human experts.

Rick Weiss, DARPA's director of strategic communications, said the growth of IoT means "cybersecurity needs to evolve to a largely automated, scalable process."

Seven teams from around the U.S. will compete head-to-head in the finals of CGC for nearly $4 million in prizes and the chance to do their patriotic duty to help revolutionize cybersecurity in the U.S.

The finalists that will duke it out with their minds are:

* CodeJitsu (Berkeley, Calif.): A team affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley;

* ForAllSecure (Pittsburgh, Pa.): A startup founded by a team of computer security researchers from Carnegie Mellon University;

* TECHx (Charlottesville, Va.): Software analysis experts from GrammaTech, Inc., a developer of software assurance tools and advanced cybersecurity solutions, and the University of Virginia;

* CSDS (Moscow, Idaho): A professor and post-doctoral researcher from the University of Idaho;

* DeepRed (Arlington, Va.): A team of engineers from the Raytheon Company;

* disekt (Athens, Ga.): Four people, working out of a technology incubator, who participate in CTF competitions around the world;

* Shellphish (Santa Barbara, Calif.): A group of computer science graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

A YouTube video of CGC can be viewed here.

TagsDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, Cyber Grand Challenge