America's had it tough over the last week, accusing China of hacking and stealing intelligence (accusations which were briskly denied by the Chinese).  And now, DARPA's not taking any chances, refortifying its cyber barricade for a proactive line of defense.

DARPA spoke at an event named "cyber colloquium" requesting researchers, academics and "visionary hackers" to help beef up the cyber security of America.  The first step of this is to not be caught playing catch up, patching up holes wherever they may arise.  Instead, they'd rather be ahead of the game, preventing security leaks in the first place.  They've also got their eye on moving offensively whenever need be.

Director, Regina Dugan commented: "Malicious cyber-attacks are not merely an existential threat to our bits and bytes; they are a real threat to our physical systems, including our military systems."  For this recent initiative, DARPA has been granted $208 million for research, and we can expect this number growing rapidly over the coming years.  We're interested to see how they put Hacktivism to use.

Source: Wired, DARPA