SEMO cybersecurity students up their game with recent win

Making a jump from last year, Southeast Missouri State University cybersecurity students took second place at the 2014 Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on Friday and Saturday at Moraine Valley Community College in Chicago.

Northern Kentucky University took first place at this year's Midwest Regional CCDC, in which teams representing Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and Kentucky participated, a university news release said.

Southeast's team advanced to the competition after taking first place for the second straight year at the Missouri Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on Feb. 22.

At last year's regionals, the team was unranked, meaning it did not place in the top four, said Dr. Vijay Anand, faculty adviser and team mentor.

The Southeast Cyber Defense Club had eight contestants and one alternate. The scenario they had to tackle was similar to last year, when students walked into a company where the IT department had been laid off and they had to maintain services while defending the network from attacks, he said.

Every team has the same baseline system and has to protect against the same types of attacks. Based on how teams compete, or maintain their systems, their score is high or low.

A Red Team is made up of industry professionals and others, and a White Team issues various management directives about services being up and reporting of incidents. The scoring engine also is with the White Team, Anand said. The Blue Teams represent the universities.

The system for regional competition is built from scratch each year by a set of engineers who knowingly put in flaws for students to find. Students have to do some reconnaissance to uncover corrupted files, which takes time.

There were a couple of changes this year, including a different firewall -- instead of a Cisco, it was a Palo Alto, a type that has not been used as much in academic curricula. "We just saw their interface one week before the competition and that was it," Anand said.

A firewall is a network appliance that blocks incoming and outgoing traffic based on a set of rules.

The differences this year, Anand said, were the tremendous student effort, team camaraderie, increased knowledge and taking advantage of scripting.

"This time we went with the thought of keeping it simple" and trying not to use some "exotic solution," Anand said. "Whenever there is an attack and loss of service, the objective is to go back to the fundamentals and try to find the simplest route to bring our service back," Anand said. "That's something I stressed with all the students during the competition.

"We know how to at least rank or how to keep our services ... up for a very long time. That is a very important learning experience because we can prepare all we want, but in a competition environment, keeping your services going for that long takes a lot of effort. ... We have to always be on top of things."

Cyber Defense Club founder and Southeast senior Jeremy Wiedner was excited about this year's finish. He said the way the winners were being announced, he thought Southeast didn't place. When the team heard they had, they all looked at each other to make sure they heard right.

Expected to graduate May 17, Wiedner said he has passed the presidency over to Charles Harner.

"In a way, I was happy [the competition was over] because it's a lot of work and it's a lot of stress, but at the same time, it's a lot of fun," he said. "You really get to know the people that you're competing with, but I'm looking forward to seeing what the new members [on] next year's team will do. I'm expecting great things from them, so I'm really excited to see them perform and shine."

The cybersecurity program has grown from 20 students two and a half years ago to about 100 now, Anand said. Seven of them are expected to graduate this spring, he said.

Eight Southeast students, from freshmen to seniors majoring in cybersecurity, participated in the Midwest Regional CCDC: Wiedner of Imperial, Mo., Blynn Atchley of Malden, Mo., Charles Harner of Joppa, Ill., Melanie Thiemann of Wentzville, Mo., Nick Howe of Malden, Mo., JoLynn Hallmark of Andover, Kan., Tyler Morgan of Waterloo, Ill., and George Papulis of Ballwin, Mo., the release said. Zachary Peek served as the alternate, the release said.

rcambell@semissourian.com

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