Communications of the ACM
This Pentagon Project Makes Cyberwar as Easy as Angry Birds
A new DARPA program designed to facilitate cyberwarfare is as easy to use as a video game.
Credit: Rovio Mobile Ltd.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a program called Plan X designed to facilitate cyberwarfare that is executed in a manner similar to playing a video game.
Created by some of the designers responsible for Apple's most successful computers and the illustrators responsible for the Transformers movie, Plan X aims to simplify cyberweapons so that average officers can use them as easily as an iPhone.
Last year, Dan Roelker, who joined DARPA specifically to make his idea for Plan X a reality, teamed with top gaming industry technologists to begin work on a graphical user interface for cyberwar. Ultimately, the team determined that the best way to work with the data was through Frog Design's mapping models.
Frog's Nick de la Mare says the model starts with a small piece of the Internet and plots out how packets move from one node to another, and then makes that map extremely simple to navigate.
Ultimately, the interface is expected to help prepare war plans that will compile a custom-made software program, which will be checked for errors and approved, enabling push-button cyberstrikes. Currently in its initial phase, Plan X is a $110-million, four-year program.
From Wired News
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