DARPA to Turn Off Funding for Hackers Pursuing Cybersecurity Research

The Pentagon is scuttling a program that awards grants to reformed hackers and security professionals for short-term research with game-changing potential, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab.

The Cyber Fast Track program, first reported by Nextgov, is managed by Peiter Zatko, a gray-hat hacker himself who goes by the nickname "Mudge." The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency initiative seeds months-long research on strategies, as opposed to multi-year, multi-million dollar systems that, the thinking goes, proceed slower than hackers’ brains. Bad actors typically devise new threats faster than it takes most government-funded efforts to develop protections.