Hackers converged on Iowa State on Saturday for ISU’s annual Cyber Defense Competition that pitted ISU students against industry professionals in a game of virtual capture the flag.
The CDC was made up of teams of ISU students who worked as defenders of cyber networks and fought malicious attacks from outside users. The situation was aimed to simulate companies that try to allow user traffic through their website while keeping out unwanted visitors.
“It’s very much a hands-on thing.” said John Sedig, senior in computer engineering and leader of Team Password. “It really enhances stuff from the classroom. You have to put a lot of thought and thinking on your feet into it too.”
Each of the student teams (blue teams) had a Windows remote server, a Linux remote server, a mail server and Web server, which they defended from malicious cyber attacks by the red team. The blue teams monitored traffic from “users” who made up the green team, which had access to the site to poke around and assess security and services.
The red team was made up of industry professionals from companies in the Midwest who were called in to hack their information and attempt to gain control of the website and capture information.
For more on the CDC, visit the Iowa State Daily. You can also read an article from the Ames Tribune.