Sarah Mackey Wins Computer Security Contest

2016 Apr 29

Students from the Buena Vista University computer science department competed against each other and students from three additional schools during BVU's fourth annual virtual Capture the Flag computer security contest on Saturday, April 16.

Sarah Mackey , a BVU junior mathematics and computer science major from Center Point, was a member of the BVU team that took first place in the Group 2 bracket.

A total of 67 students competed in the contest from BVU and three other schools: Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash.; Taylor University in Upland, Ind.; and The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

During the attack-and-defend challenge, which was spread over eight hours of competition time, 12 teams of five to six students each from the participating schools had the opportunity to test their hacking skills in a real-time setting and were also assigned servers to protect. Teams accumulated points by capturing data or "flags" from the servers of their competitors, by ensuring their servers were secure to prevent flag theft and by keeping their software services uninterrupted. Web cameras and projectors created a virtual window among contestants across the four remote sites for the duration of the contest.

"The BVU Capture the Flag contest challenges students to think critically about the unintended consequences of improper software design," said Dr. Nathan Backman, assistant professor of computer science at BVU and organizer of the Capture the Flag contest. "Software must be written with security in mind, and this exercise emphasizes the importance of diving into the hacker mindset to think offensively and comprehensively about security to discover vulnerabilities so that these holes can be patched."

This year's event was structured in a new bracket-style competition model that could allow for increased scalability and participation from additional universities in the future, with the 12 teams divided into two groups of six teams each.

Backman received an education grant award from Amazon Web Services to obtain external server space to facilitate the challenge.