DRIFT

Our DARPA-backed project, Defender Resilience via InFormed Toolchains (DRIFT), is a cutting-edge initiative aimed at revolutionizing cybersecurity defenses for critical infrastructure. Spearheaded by Aarno Labs in collaboration with MIT and Brown University, the project targets some of the most persistent challenges in software security, including vulnerability reachability and flaw-trigger recovery. Using a unique combination of runtime, dynamic, and static analyses, DRIFT enables powerful new capabilities for detecting and addressing vulnerabilities deep within complex systems. Our tools can pinpoint precise paths that lead to software flaws, bringing unprecedented clarity to security assessments and remediation.

At the core of DRIFT’s innovation is its groundbreaking capability to conduct both static and dynamic analyses that work seamlessly together, overcoming the scalability and efficiency barriers that have hindered previous solutions. Leveraging our powerful CodeHawk and DIODE tools, the DRIFT platform is designed to work efficiently at scale, even across the varied and complex environments found in critical infrastructure systems. For example, DRIFT’s minimally invasive binary patching process allows for the precise targeting and elimination of security flaws without the need for disruptive software upgrades or recompilations. This capability represents a major leap forward in how software vulnerabilities can be managed and mitigated in real-time environments.

Our vision is to make DRIFT’s toolchain an integral part of a resilient national infrastructure, providing rapid, effective, and minimally disruptive protection against evolving threats. By harnessing advanced technologies like program metadata augmentation, low-overhead runtime instrumentation, and intelligent trigger input generation, DRIFT demonstrates a scalable solution capable of evolving alongside the systems it protects. The insights and innovations from DRIFT not only promise a high degree of security assurance for today’s systems but also lay the groundwork for safeguarding the infrastructure of tomorrow.