The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has teamed up with five American firms to develop covert communication systems designed to withstand advanced surveillance under its Provably Weird Network Deployment and Detection (PWND2) program.
Partners include Two Six Labs of Virginia, along with Massachusetts-based RTX BBN Technologies and Systems & Technology Research, which signed separate contracts this month totaling $21.8 million, according to Military & Aerospace Electronics.
In late July, DARPA also issued contracts totaling $7.4 million to Stealth Software Technologies of Arizona and SRI International of California, both specializing in artificial intelligence and cryptography, as the program’s initial collaborators.
The Provably Weird Network Deployment and Detection Program
PWND2 seeks to address weaknesses in current covert communication systems, which rely on slow manual design, provide only short-term protection, and depend on costly testing that often fails to capture real-world conditions.
The program will use dynamic networking, advanced methods, and privacy tools to build so-called “weird networks,” or resilient systems meant to protect national security activities and support global internet freedom with proven privacy and performance at scale.
To test this concept, research teams will develop a domain-specific coding language and analysis software to verify the operability, scalability, security, and privacy of weird networks within hidden communication systems.
The resulting networks will function as part of larger systems that enable covert communications, with emphasis on how data moves through them and how adversaries attempt to uncover it.
DARPA said that understanding related patterns is critical to measuring privacy and performance, noting that small or infrequent messages are far easier to hide and almost effortless to conceal if no one is actively looking for them.
“PWND2 defines the term weird network as infrastructure that enables emergent, unintended communications outside the original specification of a network, and can formally represent any form of hidden or obfuscated communication,” the agency stated.
30-Month Effort
PWND2 will use a two-step submission process to give researchers more room to focus on fresh technical ideas while keeping cost and pricing paperwork to a minimum.
The initiative will run for 30 months in a single phase. It begins with a six-month “kick start” period to build early prototypes, followed by two years of further development under contract.
Over that time, DARPA will stage a series of experiments using increasingly complex hidden communication systems as test cases.
Program teams will then be asked to model these systems and show proof of how well they can protect communications, with DARPA’s test and evaluation team checking the results.
