UVa along with Grammatech, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Raytheon Corporation was awarded a multi-year, $12.9M contract focused on improving software security. The program, called STONESOUP (Securely Taking on New Software of of Uncertain Provenance) has as a goal to develop technology to ensure the safe and secure execution of code. The program is an initiative of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Office of Safe and Secure Operations and administered by the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).

STONESOUP seeks to address a key problem in today’s world: How can we use software securely if we do not know how or by whom the software was created, or where its component parts originated? Software is produced around the world; component parts come from many different places and are integrated into larger systems. The production of software increasingly involves contract software engineers and off-shore suppliers because it is often prohibitively expensive to generate a major system completely in-house. Accordingly, security-conscious users require ways to assure that the software they utilize performs no malicious actions.