Showing posts with label Cyber (InfoSec) Competitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cyber (InfoSec) Competitions. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Labels:
Cyber (InfoSec) Competitions
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cyber challenges
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USCC
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U.S. Cyber Challenge 2013
In June I attended the U.S. Cyber Challenge, and for those that don't know about it, I'm posting a review because this is one event that deserves more attention.
To sum up what it is, here's an excerpt from the main website:
USCC Summer Camps feature one week of specialized cyber security training that includes workshops, a job fair, and a culminating “Capture the Flag” competition. The workshops are lead by college faculty, top SANS Institute instructors, and cyber security experts from the community. The workshops and presentations focus on a variety of topics ranging from intrusion detection, penetration testing and forensics. Participants can also participate in a job fair that provides them the opportunity to meet with USCC sponsors and discuss potential employment. The week-long program ends with a competitive “Capture the Flag” competition and an awards ceremony attended by notables in the cyber security industry and government.
Qualifying
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| Image Credit: vmpyrdavid |
In order to attend the camp, you have to compete in the initial challenge. This year that involved packet capture analysis, which tested not only your ability to filter through the pcap for relevant information, but also to identify in the pcap what type of web-based attack was happening (XSS, SQLi, etc). Based on how well you performed, you are sent an invitation email. I think the invitation is really just a process to weed out those individuals that are really motivated or genuine about attending the event, because to complete the invitation, you have to seek out two letters of recommendation (LoR). One of those letters can be personal from a friend, but the other has to be from either a teacher or your boss. People not willing to go to those lengths are not given further consideration.
After submitting the LoR, I received an email confirming my selection along with instructions for attendance!
Event Venue
Apparently, the event venue changes from year to year and in 2013 it was held at the Hotel Roanoke in Virginia. USCC attendees were slated two to a room. Make sure you check out the event logistics for future years so you don't mistakenly tell someone they can come room with you and then have to nix those plans later.
The hotel had all the required amenities including a gym, pool, and cafe/bar. Hotel wireless is bound to the credentials of the person checking in, and there's a max of 5 devices per login.
Attached to the hotel was a conference area where the USCC conference would be held. The wireless signal reached in all areas, but perhaps due to the number of attendees, bandwidth was slow. Don't plan to rely on your carrier's hotspot because multiple attendees from multiple carriers had spotty service in the conference area. Your mileage may vary.
The Classes
The cyber camp is really a 4-day session of differing topics each day, capped off with a capture the flag competition at the end of the week. These were the daily sessions:
- Day 1 - Scapy
- Day 2 - Android Pen Testing
- Day 3 - Memory Forensics with Redline and Volatility
- Day 4 - Tactical Incident Handling & Hacking Techniques
Each session included SANS excerpts from their classes focusing on these topics, along with instructors who teach those classes. The quality of instruction was extremely high, and for that alone the USCC is worth attending.
At the end of day 2 there was an ethics discussion panel to review topics such as expectation of privacy. Each table was grouped into a team for discussion to review a couple hypothetical scenarios, with the results shared in an open dialog. It was very interesting conversation.
At the end of day 4 there was a job fair. Already gainfully employed, I did not attend.
Capture the Flag
Day 5 culminated into a CTF, with attendees grouped randomly into teams of four or five. The infrastructure for the CTF was provided by iSight through their Threatspace CTF platform. The challenges, from what I can remember now, were largely based on web-oriented and forensics-oriented approaches. I used OWASP-ZAP and HTTP Header manipulation tools to identify some flags from the web-based challenges. For the forensics-focused we used Wireshark, John the Ripper, Cain & Abel, and aircrack.
Although my team did not win or place, it was fun learning new tools and their extended usage.
Overall, this experience was fantastic, and I highly recommend everyone give themselves the opportunity to experience it. Keep checking the USCC Cyber Quest site for future challenges!
Monday, April 29, 2013
Labels:
CCDC
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Cyber (InfoSec) Competitions
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cyber challenges
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maccdc
MACCDC 2013, A Blue Teamer's Lessons Learned
This is the first part of a series of blog posts I'll be writing to relate the various things I learned from getting to experience the glory that is MACCDC. Here is a "table of contents" which I'll update with relevant posts:
For this year's competition, schools were allowed to have eight people to a Blue Team. The teams were organized by having a captain and co-captain oversee the other six. During the competition, the captain is responsible (among other things) for communicating business injects to the team members and is the team liaison with the white cell. Because the team captain can be asked to step away for interviews or captain-specific business injects, the co-captain should be capable of fulfilling those same duties.
The team members need to be comprised of people with a good mix of skills between Linux, Windows, Web Applications, and Firewalls. This means that every person on the team needs to be technically capable, or trained to be, by competition time. There were several instances at MACCDC 2013 where someone was pulled away to help another team member on something or complete an inject, leaving a laptop open. Ideally there should never be a time when someone's not working on a laptop (injects notwithstanding), which means that each person should be technically capable or comfortable with picking up where someone else left off.
Continue reading MACCDC 2013, Part 2
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MACCDC 2013, A Blue Teamer's Lessons Learned: Part 1 - Team Selection
MACCDC 2013, A Blue Teamer's Lessons Learned
This is the first part of a series of blog posts I'll be writing to relate the various things I learned from getting to experience the glory that is MACCDC. Here is a "table of contents" which I'll update with relevant posts:
#1 - Team selection
#4 - Game Time
And so we begin number one...
Team Selection
For this year's competition, schools were allowed to have eight people to a Blue Team. The teams were organized by having a captain and co-captain oversee the other six. During the competition, the captain is responsible (among other things) for communicating business injects to the team members and is the team liaison with the white cell. Because the team captain can be asked to step away for interviews or captain-specific business injects, the co-captain should be capable of fulfilling those same duties.
The team members need to be comprised of people with a good mix of skills between Linux, Windows, Web Applications, and Firewalls. This means that every person on the team needs to be technically capable, or trained to be, by competition time. There were several instances at MACCDC 2013 where someone was pulled away to help another team member on something or complete an inject, leaving a laptop open. Ideally there should never be a time when someone's not working on a laptop (injects notwithstanding), which means that each person should be technically capable or comfortable with picking up where someone else left off.
Continue reading MACCDC 2013, Part 2
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Labels:
Cyber (InfoSec) Competitions
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global cyberlympics
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UMUC
Regardless of what our standing was throughout those grueling six hours, all UMUC team members were focused on doing our best. It was hard-won, as we were competing with Hungary for that 2nd place ranking up until the very end.
I was honored to be a member of the UMUC team and represent the United States in this global contest. I learned so much in preparing for the event, that my mind is still filled with ideas for improving and optimizing the entire workflow. At work the past two days, these ideas keep popping into the forethought. This competition has had such an impact on me that it's altered my focus of what I want to do in my free time. Now I find a burning desire to do everything I can to learn Ruby on Rails and Python so I can be well-versed in scripting components for metasploit.
What I learned most from this competition is that I still have so much to learn, and that the anticipation of doing so makes me excited to see what's next!
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Global CyberLympics Results
UMUC Takes Second
The UMUC team has returned home from Miami as heroes! Representing North America, we out-maneuvered six other teams from Hungary, Brazil, Australia, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka to take 2nd place. The defending champions, hack.ers (Netherlands), were slow to start, but soon out-paced everyone in obtaining points and maintaining that lead. The gap between first and second place only widened as the competition picked up pace.Regardless of what our standing was throughout those grueling six hours, all UMUC team members were focused on doing our best. It was hard-won, as we were competing with Hungary for that 2nd place ranking up until the very end.
I was honored to be a member of the UMUC team and represent the United States in this global contest. I learned so much in preparing for the event, that my mind is still filled with ideas for improving and optimizing the entire workflow. At work the past two days, these ideas keep popping into the forethought. This competition has had such an impact on me that it's altered my focus of what I want to do in my free time. Now I find a burning desire to do everything I can to learn Ruby on Rails and Python so I can be well-versed in scripting components for metasploit.
What I learned most from this competition is that I still have so much to learn, and that the anticipation of doing so makes me excited to see what's next!
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Labels:
Cyber (InfoSec) Competitions
,
cyber challenges
,
dc3
,
global cyberlympics
,
mdc3
Another way to enhance your tech skills: Cyber Challenges
In the past year, I've been lucky enough to participate in three or four Cyber Challenge competitions including MDC3 (2011 and now 2012), the Global CyberLympics, and DC3.
MDC3
The MDC3 is a competition with three levels of entry:
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MDC3
The MDC3 is a competition with three levels of entry:
- High School
- Collegiate
- Professional
From the website:
Global CyberLympics
The CyberLympics is another competition very similar to the MDC3, since they both use the same CyberNEXS system from SAIC. There are three rounds before finals, only instead of being limited regionally, the teams compete from around the globe (APAC, EMEA, and Americas).
DC3
DC3 is a forensics-focused challenge where they post problems falling into several levels of difficulty. The goal is to find information and report it along with the methodology you used to retrieve the information.
There are three qualifying rounds: forensics, attacking, and defense. The final round is a capture the flag competition.What is the Challenge?Teams within each level will battle it out in a series of “hackathons”—exciting, real-world cybersecurity games that put their critical thinking skills to the ultimate test.Online qualification rounds will test each team’s cyber defense skills, including their ability to harden systems against vulnerabilities, maintain critical services, and communicate timely and effectively. As teams advance, the qualification rounds will increase in complexity and intensity.The finals—to be hosted at CyberMaryland 2012—will include a Capture the Flag/King of the Hill variation which introduces more exercise problems as the game progresses.
Global CyberLympics
The CyberLympics is another competition very similar to the MDC3, since they both use the same CyberNEXS system from SAIC. There are three rounds before finals, only instead of being limited regionally, the teams compete from around the globe (APAC, EMEA, and Americas).
DC3
DC3 is a forensics-focused challenge where they post problems falling into several levels of difficulty. The goal is to find information and report it along with the methodology you used to retrieve the information.
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