High score for Capitol’s cyber team at MITRE competition

A dedicated group of Capitol students recently spent their Friday night battling cyber threats during a 24-hour lock-in at the university’s Cyber Lab, held in conjunction with MITRE Cyber Academy’s sixth national Capture the Flag (CTF) competition.

Team members faced off against students from colleges and universities across the country, tackling such challenges as binary exploitation and reversing, web exploitation, computer/network forensics, cryptography, and critical infrastructure protection.

When the event finished at 5 pm on Saturday (September 17), Capitol’s team had racked up an impressive 1,910 points, placing in 7th place out of 46 schools in the college division.

It was an exciting result for a team that consists largely of freshmen and sophomores, many of whom are new to the world of cyber competitions. According to Cyber Lab manager Yesihake Abraha, who led the effort, their success had a lot to do with the degree of collaboration.

“The reason we did well is that we had a lot of people coming together and collaborating, not just working separately,” Abraha said. “The CTF can be done individually or in a group environment. We wanted students to come in and see what we could find out by working together.”

The event allowed more experienced students to mentor their younger counterparts, helping them build their confidence as they gained practice in handling an environment of intense competition.

“A lot of people get scared by CTFs,” Abraha explained. “They don’t think they’re smart enough to do it or they don’t think they have what it takes. Bringing everyone here really helped with the morale. Students loved coming here -- they met new people and figured out how to do these challenges. We were all enjoying ourselves, having fun.”

Beyond the MITRE event, the longer-term plan is for Capitol’s cyber team to participate in several competitions over the year, culminating in the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC).

“We wanted students to come in and participate in the MITRE challenge so they will be prepared for the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC) later in the school year,” Abraha said. “We’re planning on having more events like this in the future.”