Cyber defense team places third at DEFCON 15

	Cyber defense team members (L to R): Jordan Cardwell, Ronni Wilkinson, Boris Kurktchiev and Paul Sagona (not pictured: Marshall Hollis)
	Setting up prior to the competition

Computer Science and Engineering recently sent a newly-formed cyber defense team to DEFCON 15 in Las Vegas, August 3-5, 2007, to participate in the amateur "Capture the Flag" (aCTF) competition. Having held first position throughout most of the first day of the contest, the "Robots Get Wedgies Too" team consisting of CSE graduate students Jordan Cardwell, Boris Kurktchiev, and Paul Sagona, as well as SC State ITS employee Marshall Hollis and led by ITS Manager Ronni Wilkinson, finished with a third place ranking out of the 26 registered teams at the end of the two-day competition.

"We are very excited about our third place win as this was our first time participating in the competition," said Wilkinson. "This is definitely something we are planning to participate in in the future."

The competition consists of teams of participants presented with various levels of challenges with the goal of attempting to break, or "hack," into computers and services to put their team's name into a file – a file for each different component of the competition -- capturing the virtual flag for each challenge. Challenges include different levels of difficulty from traditional vulnerabilities and exploits, to cryptographic challenges, to simple computer games of hangman and blackjack, with each challenge gaining different numbers of points. The total amount of points a team earns by the end of the competition determines their ranking.

"Competitions such as this allow students to learn things that cannot be taught in a classroom situation. They can learn techniques and methods that make the theory taught in the classroom concrete and relevant. The more we participate, the more we learn what our students know and what they need to be taught – all to strengthen our computer science and engineering program and make sure what we are teaching will be relevant when they get jobs later in the computer security field." said Wilkinson.

Computer Science and Engineering will be taking a cyber defense team to participate at DEFCON 16 next year. Students may express interest to Ronni Wilkinson (ronni@sc.edu, 7-1205). Please note: space is limited. Only the most qualified of those students who express an interest in participating will be chosen.

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More information on DEFCON15 can be found at https://www.defcon.org.

More information on the aCTF competition can be found at http://dc949.org/aCTFIII.

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7/16/07