EECS Students Host Cyberdefense Competition for High School Students

The EECS Jayhackers hosted a cyberdefense competition for two weeks in fall 2018 that included high school teams as well as EECS students. In the past, Jayhacker competitions have consisted of an eight hour setup and attack phase all on one day. This year, the group decided to change the format and give the students a two week setup time. This allowed coaches to teach their students about fundamental security concepts and learn over a longer period of time. All teams came to the Edwards campus on October 6 to compete in the on-site attack phase, where professional hackers tried to penetrate their networks. The competition included two teams from Lee’s Summit West High School, one from Olathe Northwest High School and a team of novice EECS students from KU.

The competitors were all given a network of machines with preinstalled vulnerabilities, which they needed to harden and defend. They simulated an IT team for a tech company that had a website for users to upload and watch videos. The scenario was that the company had been hacked recently and the hackers had weakened the security and took down the services. The team needed to help their company host their website along with many other services like SSH and RDP logins for developers, and keeping up a Domain Controller system.

At the end of the day, the students were successful in defending their networks, given their quick introduction to the topics. Red team successfully social engineered every team and stole their passwords, which was the main point of compromise (the teams will remember to lock their computers and take their password sheets next time). The winners of the competition were the students from Lee’s Summit West, with Olathe Northwest and Lee’s Summit West (team 2) coming in second and third respectively.

  Fall 2018 Jayhacker hosted Cyberdefense Competition for High School Students