Playing Games for the Dept. of Defense
BeckyStrause
Flaws in software can cause major issues, and make the software vulnerable to cyber attacks. However, verifying the code used in the software can be very time-intensive for skilled engineers. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) came up with a solution to this ongoing issue. They figured out how to get non-skilled people to do the work of the highly-skilled. According to their site , “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) program seeks to replace the intensive work done by the domain experts by greatly decreasing the skill required to do Formal Verification, and therefore allow more people (who do not need to be domain experts) to perform the analysis in a more efficient manner.”
How are they doing that? By getting people to play games that represent underlying mathematical concepts.
“We’re seeing if we can take really hard math problems and map them onto interesting, attractive puzzle games that online players will solve for fun,” explained Drew Dean, DARPA manager of CSFV, “ By leveraging players’ intelligence and ingenuity on a broad scale, we hope to reduce security analysts’ workloads and fundamentally improve the availability of formal verification. ”
The site is Verigames.com , which looks to be a normal game site and has five games: Storm Bound, Circuitbot, Xylem, Flow Jam, and Ghost Map. The games are all free to play, but because government regulations require adult volunteer participants for this DARPA research program, CSFV games are open only to players ages 18 and up. The games can be played without the player signing in, but then no data is saved.
If you have ever wanted to work for the Department of Defense, this is your chance. Granted, it’s all on a voluntary basis and you probably shouldn’t list “game playing” on your resume. Some people may be nervous that the US Military’s research agency will be spying on those playing the games. And with the NSA spying on games like World of Warcraft , that may be a valid concern. Of course those wearing tin foil hats might say the government already knows all our coming and going, so does it really matter?
Image Source: Verigames on Youtube
