CSC News
Students Make Strong Showing in Cyber Security Competitions
A team of five students from the NC State Computer Science Department has advanced to the 2013 National CyberWatch Center Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MA CCDC) Regional Finals. The event will take place on April 10-13 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.The team from NC State, made up of Mayur Bindal, David Dearmore, Lauren Koepnick, Shea Mcintee, and Ethan Warwick (team captain), is one of eight teams to move on to the regional contest. Twenty-eight schools, representing undergraduate and graduate students from two- and four-year schools in the region, competed in virtual Qualifying Rounds on March 19-20 for a chance to qualify for the Regional Finals. The Mid-Atlantic CCDC is one of ten regional competitions, all part of the Deloitte National CCDC. The competition scenario of this year's contest is based on defending an electronic voting system that uses voter identification cards.
The eight teams advancing to the Regional Finals are: Anne Arundel Community College (MD), Capitol College (MD), Craven Community College (NC), Millersville University (PA), NC State University, Radford University (VA), University of Maryland College Park (MD), and University of Maryland University College (MD).
CCDC is a three-day event and the first competition that specifically focuses on the operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing “commercial” network infrastructure. Not only do students get a chance to test their knowledge in an operational environment, they also get a chance to network with industry professionals who are always on the lookout for up and coming engineers. CCDC provides a unique opportunity for students and industry professionals to interact and discuss many of the security and operational challenges the students will face as they enter the job market. For more information about the competition, click here.
(Mid-Atlantic CCDC UPDATE!!! The NC State Team tied for first place among the eight teams competing! Unfortunately, a tie breaker gave the edge to Millersville Uinversity, so the NC State team officially came in second place. The NC State team made a big impression at the competition and shocked a lot of people with many first time accomplishments: This was the first time there has been a tie for first place; this was the first time a new team has placed first in the competition, and it is rare to have a team as small as the NC State team (five members) compete and win. All other teams had eight members.)
Another team of students participated in the UCSB International Capture the Flag (iCTF), a distributed, wide-area security exercise, whose goal is to test the security skills of the participants, on March 22, 2013. The iCTF contest is organized by Dr. Giovanni Vigna of the Department of Computer Science at UCSB.
NC State’s iCTF team, made up of Samantha Hoang, Stephanie King, Lauren Koepnick, Alex Park, David Thompson, Brandon Walker, and Ethan Warwick, finished 52nd out of 98 teams.
The Capture the Flag contest is a multi-site, multi-team hacking contest in which a number of teams compete independently against each other. The theme of the competition is “Protect the Critical Infrastructure.” Each team has to detect attacks against a server that controls multiple critical services. In addition, the teams have to develop attacks to compromise the services of other teams. In the end, the team with the best combination of attack and defense skills wins. For more information, click here.
The students would like to thank the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation for providing the technology infrastructure and facility spaces for both competitions. They would also like to thank Samuel Carter, the teams’ faculty advisor, and Tim Gurganus, security expert from NC State’s Office of Information Technology.
~coates~
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