Capitol cyber team passes the torch to new generation, builds new capabilities

Capitol’s Cyber Battle Team put in a strong performance at this year’s Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC), passing the first round qualifier and finishing eighth in the regional competition. 

In the process, the team laid the groundwork for greater success in the future, recruiting a new generation of team members and deploying resources that could provide an additional edge.

The team’s leader, freshman Jonathan Leao, and fellow members Xavier Allen, Zac Cabral, David Mensah, Tyrell Williams, Nathaniel Robinson, Joshua Joseph and Zachary  Blankenship navigated a highly unpredictable array of challenges.

“They threw a lot of curveballs at us,” Leao said. “For instance, this year’s competition had an orange team representing end users – members of this team would call us and we’d have to help them with any technical issues they were having.”

“That is something we haven’t encountered before in previous MACCDCs. That was a big hurdle, as we weren’t prepared, going in, to help end-users. We were prepared with our back and defending our machines,” he said.

He credits the team’s “very strong Linux side” with pulling the team through to a respectable finish.

“We had two machines outside of the firewall and surprisingly these two machines were the ones that got hit the least. Despite not being inside the firewall, they turned out to be the most secure of the machines – and our Linux guys really stepped up to the plate to keep them online. We had a very strong Linux side, a lot of very sharp people,” Leao said.

Lessons learned for next year include earlier team formation, which would allow members more time to work together and become more familiar with their systems.

“With more preparation, I think we could have gone a lot farther than we did,” he said.

Money raised during a giving campaign in the fall will help in getting the team together earlier and arranging more practice sessions. Thanks to the generosity of alumni who provided donations during the campaign, the team was able to purchase a server which they can use to set up virtual environments – allowing them to practice even when not on the Capitol campus.

“We have set this up but were not able to practice with it before this year’s competition,” Leao explained. “Next year, we expect it to make a big difference. “We’ll have a bunch of virtual machines running systems that we think will be used in competition, and then – say I’m at my house an hour away, I can still log in and practice with the rest of the team.” Leao said.