Hardening Development Toolchains Against Emergent Execution Engines (HARDEN)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency seeks proposals through November 4, 2021 under Broad Agency Announcement HR001121S0040 to develop tools that can anticipate, isolate and mitigate unintended programmable behaviors in software throughout the development lifecycle. The goal is to prevent adversaries from exploiting unexpected program execution in integrated systems. Proposals will be evaluated based on technical merit and management capabilities across four technical areas over three phases from 2022 through 2026, with evaluation exercises occurring every six months to assess progress in reasoning about emergent behaviors and mitigating exploitation across abstraction levels.

There is no set-aside designation for this opportunity, which involves research in scientific research and development services (NAICS 541715) and research and development in the social sciences and humanities (PSC Y1). Multiple awards are anticipated for the first two technical areas, with evaluation taking place at regular intervals from months nine through forty-seven to gauge advancement of capabilities for analyzing unintended software behaviors and disruption of exploit techniques.