Jayhackers Compete in Argonne National Labs Cyber Defense Competition

The EECS Information Security Club cyber defense team competed in the Argonne National Labs Cyber Defense Competition in April 2018. The team was comprised of three club members in computer science from the Lawrence campus and three members from information technology from the Edwards campus. The team had six weeks of preparation and setup time. Their goal was to defend their network from professional hackers and keep necessary services functional for employees and administrators. This group of veteran competitors pooled their knowledge to create a diverse and competitive team.

The KU team acted as the IT team for a natural gas company. The KU students were tasked with securing the industrial control devices and internal network from malicious hackers. This simulated how an actual company deals with on and off site servers and devices. The professional hackers on the Red Team attempted to breach the team’s network and eliminate functionality of the company’s services and devices. After a grueling attack phase, KU finished 8th out of 25 teams. Overall, the KU team had the highest documentation scores and was in the top five most secure teams, as judged by the Red Team. Succeeding in this competition could not have been done without the help of the EECS Department and the School of Engineering. Armed with the experience of this year, the team hopes to return next year and bring a first place finish back to KU.

From left to right: Chris Seasholtz (Advisor), Doug Van Allen, Justin Walberg, Ellis Springe, Gage Benne, Katelyn Dean, Tyler Michels. Gage and Katelyn are SFS.