Cyber Defense Club
JMU Students Take Third in the Regional Cyber Defense Competition
By Amanda Rivera
Posted: April 23, 2007
“A full-blown network attack can paralyze an entire country. It can devastate your banking system, your stock-market, your water system and everything else….in a matter of days,” says Dr. M. Hossain Heydari. Stressing the importance of network security, this JMU Computer Science professor found a way to provide his students with simulations of such a scenario. Entering five Computer Science students into the 2nd year of the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, Dr. Heydari offered Charles Fairchild, Drew Heyes, Aaron Sharpes, Charles Ray and Scott Young the opportunity to apply information security practices they’ve been learning all year long.
Enticing students from the Cyber Defense Club and an information security course, Dr. Heydari says, “We have a strong security systems program and we felt we should get involved and get students involved in regional or national competitions.” However, time was not on their side. He states, “We really found out about the competition late last semester, so our students didn’t have that much time to prepare, so we are really proud of them for what they achieved.” Despite this hindrance, the five Computer Science students worked arduously, preparing right up until the date of the competition with the help of Dr. Heydari and fellow CS professors Dr. Brett Tjaden and Dr. Mohamed S. Aboutabl. Destined for the world of cyberspace, the team left for the three-day competition hosted by the Community College of Baltimore County in Maryland.
Participating in the competition held March 9-11, the JMU team faced the reality of the ins and outs of network security. “The students were expected to maintain a fictitious company website that provides services to customers and at the same protect that website from incoming attacks,” says Dr. Aboutabl. Competing against seven other teams including last year’s winners, emotions ran high during the long hours of the competition. “Specifically, a lot of the teams that we competed against had competed in the first one and prepared all year long for this competition, so we were at a distinct disadvantage both because we had never competed before so we didn’t know what to expect and we had less experience and prep time,” states Dr. Tjaden. To compensate for these shortcomings, the team worked increasingly hard, double-duty even. Dr. Aboutabl observed, “They were having their meals while they were working on the keyboards.”
As the designated “white teams,” the schools were required to defend their companies against the specialized tactics of the “red team.” “This was probably the first time that any of the students in the competition had been exposed to professional hackers,” says Dr. Tjaden. While the red team posed more experience than the participating teams, Dr. Heydari notes that the JMU team found solace in their academic background. He says, “I think they have a lot of appreciation for what they learned in the labs, from what they expected to learn in the security courses and what we asked them to do to be prepared for the competition.” However, the students learned that certain things can not be taught. “One other thing that I think we could not teach them in the classes is the fact that it’s not enough to secure your software system and applications [but put] emphasis on the physical security of your networks that was demonstrated during the competition,” says Dr. Aboutabl.
In the end, the JMU team discovered that their hard work had paid off. Placing third in the competition, they also received the awards for the Highest Service Availability and Best Incident Reporting. While both the students and the faculty benefited from the event, participation in next year’s competition is already in the making. Dr. Aboutabl says, “We also came up with the idea that we could actually organize this event. So, we are going to collaborate with the Community College of Baltimore County which manages the event that we can host this event at JMU. They welcomed that; we just need to work out the details.” However, students remain nostalgic of their experience this year. “During it [the competition], it was clear that they were quite frustrated and stressed, all the teams, but after it was done, looking back, I think they’ll tell you that it was an extremely valuable experience,” says Dr. Tjaden.