Jane Edwards 
RTX subsidiary BBN Technologies has launched an open-source tool, called Maude-HCS, designed to help cyber defense teams model, test and validate covert communication networks.
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What Is Maude-HCS?
Available on GitHub, Maude-HCS is a toolkit that operates on standard computing hardware.
The platform is designed to accelerate validation, enable open-source collaboration and help predict key performance metrics, including latency and data rate. It also helps estimate how long a covert channel can operate without detection.
“Maude-HCS provides users a rigorous yet practical way to validate performance-privacy guarantees of hidden communication designs before they ever touch the wire,” said Joud Khoury, principal investigator at RTX BBN Technologies. “This capability has the potential to fundamentally change how the national security community builds and validates covert communication channels.”
The tool is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through its Provably Weird Network Deployment and Detection, or PWND2, program.
What Is the DARPA PWND2 Program?
PWND2 is a DARPA program that seeks to develop models of emergent communication pathways or weird networks to help improve the detection and deployment of resilient hidden networks. It is planned as a 30-month, single-phase initiative to enable research teams to build domain-specific language and formal analysis tools to verify the properties of weird networks in hidden communication platforms.
What Is RTX BBN?
RTX BBN Technologies conducts advanced technology research and development efforts. Founded in 1948, the company focuses on analytics and machine intelligence, non-kinetic domains, intelligent software and systems, and physical sciences in support of national security missions.
RTX BBN has secured several contracts from the Department of War, including an award to support the Advanced Spectrum Coexistence Demonstration program and build a prototype to protect defense radars; a DARPA contract for cybersecurity test and evaluation services; and a $125 million contract from U.S. Transportation Command to provide tools to support the development of simulation and modeling environments.
