Cadets compete in cyber competition

  • Published
  • By Ray Bowden
  • U.S. Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  The Air Force Academy Cyber Competition Team placed second out of 12 U.S. teams and ninth overall in the University of California at Santa Barbara's International Capture the Flag Cyber Competition Dec. 4.

Each cyber team received an identical computer with 30 vulnerable services during the eight-hour competition. The Academy cadets identified vulnerabilities in the services, exploited them against other teams and rewrote the program to remove the vulnerability.

"A vulnerable service is one that has an error in its programming so an attacker can access private information without knowing the password," said Dr. Martin Carlisle, the director of the Academy's Center for Cyberspace Research.

Carlisle said the cadets' performance hinged on teamwork.

"The UCSB ICFC overwhelms teams with a large number of programs to attack and defend," he said. "The cadets excelled at distributing the work and combining their solutions. This was certainly a case where the whole exceeded the sum of the parts."

Cyber competitions are important for cadets, Carlisle said.

"We're preparing cadets to lead the defense of the nation in cyber, a domain which is constantly changing," he said. "Cyber competitions force cadets to be nimble thinkers who can quickly adapt to new technologies and threats."

Cadets are scheduled to compete in the Ghost in the Shellcode Capture the Flag Jan. 8-10 and the inter-service CyberStakes competition Feb. 4-7.