Cadet Cyber Team wins 7 medals at competition

  • Published
  • U.S. Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  The Air Force Academy's Cadet Cyber Team captured seven medals during the 2015 inter-service Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Competition Jan. 30 in Pittsburgh.

The DARPA-sponsored contest featured teams from the Air Force Academy, the Military Academy, the Naval Academy and the Coast Guard Academy.  Air Force, Army and Navy fielded three cadet or midshipmen teams while Coast Guard fielded one team.

The teams competed in attack-defense, finding binary vulnerabilities, memory forensics, disc forensics and reverse engineering at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall.

In the individual Speed-Reverse Engineering competition, Cadet 1st Class Bill Parks won the gold medal. Cadet 1st Class Kevin Cooper won the silver medal and Parks won the bronze medal in the online event before the live competition.

Cadets and midshipmen also competed in a second joint attack-defense, working in teams with representatives from each service academy.

"I'm really thrilled with the cadets' performance," said Dr. Martin Carlisle, head of the Air Force Academy's Computer Sciences Department. "They've been working hard for months, preparing for these events designed to simulate challenges they'll face after graduation while conducting the cyber mission."

The Air Force team consisted of Cooper, Parks; Cadets 2nd Class Greg Fox, Josh Hayden and Eric Wardner; and Cadets 3rd Class Alex Fulton, Austin McWhirter, Everett Montano and Garrett Turley.

Next up for the Cadet Cyber Team is the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, Feb. 27-28 at the Denver Tech Center.