| Posted: May 16, 2008 |
Carbon nanotubes part of Air Force's quest to develop cyber offensive capabilities |
|
(Nanowerk News) The U.S. Air Force is calling for white papers on how it might conduct successful offensives against cyberspace adversaries.
|
|
In a call posted on May 12, 2008 on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for what it terms "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement and Supporting Technology."
|
|
The announcement encourages companies to offer a variety of techniques and technologies to battle adversaries’ computer information systems through what it terms deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy effects. The Air Force's wishlist is quite clear on what it wants to achieve:
|
|
"...high risk, high payoff capabilities for gaining access to any remotely located open or closed computer information systems"
|
|
"...these systems enabling full control of a network for the purposes of information gathering and effects based operations"
|
|
"...of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms."
|
|
"... we are interested in technology to provide the capability to maintain an active presence within the adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected"
|
|
"...of interest are any and all techniques to enable stealth and persistence capabilities on an adversaries infrastructure"
|
|
"...it is desired to have the capability to stealthily exfiltrate information from any remotely-located open or closed computer information systems with the possibility to discover information with previously unknown existence."
|
|
Research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities.
|
|
One research item on the list are carbon nanotubes: "Carbon nanotubes for high density interconnects and RF applications, to allow for incorporating novel IA designs into computer architectures through nanotube interconnects with nanotube based RF peripherals (antennas)."
|
|
Papers for fiscal 2008 are due June 5, and those for fiscal 2009 are due March 1, 2009.
|
