DARWIN: The Defense Avionics Runtime-Worthy Infected Nominations (DARWIN) Workbench, Phase II SBIR

DARWIN will equip AFRL with software to generate volumes of executable mutations of an input program, including binaries. The DARWIN Phase I effort delivered an operational prototype that has been demonstrated to mutate C programs along evolutionary paths that mitigate security weaknesses. Phase II will advance Phase I prototype capability to support advanced software security applications. Some of the advancements will include: (i) first-class support for C++ project mutations; (ii) user-defined fitness function components; (iii) support for mutations over C and C++ binaries; and (iv) advanced extensions for malware mitigation use-cases.   Phase II of the DARWIN project will build off of the success of Phase I in the following ways: provide fine-grained control over the qualities of mutated software with extended fitness functions; incorporate program analysis techniques to evaluate the effect of Genetic Algorithm (GA) mutation actions before applying them; implement DARWIN runtimes that will execute the GA across multi-processor and cloud environments, including supercomputing resources at the AFRL DSRC; introduce new configuration controls, including the ability to specify “guarded” code that should not be mutated and to scope mutations to particular functions, classes or program modules; first class support for C++ program mutation; solutions to apply mutation actions to binaries; harnesses to mutate binaries or program code in CI/CD workflows; and adopt the GA to support specific software security use-cases including program hardening and malware mitigation.