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Government Security United States

International 'US Cyber Games' Competition Seeks Next Generation of Cybersecurity Experts (washingtonpost.com) 23

"As the United States seeks to shore up its defenses against cyberattacks, the country is seeking to harness the skills of some of the country's most promising young minds," reports the Washington Post, "using a model that mirrors competitive video gaming, also known as esports."

Though it's a partnership between the federal government, academia and the private sector, it's being run by Katzcy, a northern Virginia-based digital marketing firm, the Post reports: U.S. Cyber Games, a project founded in April and funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology's National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, has assembled a team of 25 Americans, ages 18 to 26, who will compete against other countries in the inaugural International Cybersecurity Challenge, scheduled to be held in Greece in June 2022.

The cyber games consist of two broad formats, with the competitions organized and promoted to appeal to a generation raised on video gaming. The goal is to identify and train candidates for careers in cybersecurity. There are king-of-the-hill-type games where one team tries to break into a network while the other team tries to defend it. There are also capture-the-flag-type games where teams must complete a series of puzzles that follow the basic tenets of cybersecurity programs, like decrypting an encrypted file or analyzing secret network traffic...

The U.S. cyber team's head coach, retired Lt. Col. TJ O'Connor who served as a communications support officer with special forces, noted the unique platform presented by cybersecurity competitions. Unlike other forms of computer science education, O'Connor said, staying up to date on the latest developments in cybersecurity is difficult, with hackers constantly iterating on and developing new tactics to break through cyberdefenses. "Understanding the most likely attack is one thing you gain through Cyber Games. It's an attack-based curriculum, and then you can plan the most appropriate strategies when they occur," said O'Connor, who helped create and now chairs Florida Tech's cybersecurity program.

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International 'US Cyber Games' Competition Seeks Next Generation of Cybersecurity Experts

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  • by Random361 ( 6742804 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @06:14PM (#61901541)
    It's going to be televised on NBC. Highlights will include quick draw of DVDs, skateboarding through whatever metro area, an evil antagonist with a moronic girlfriend, at least one FBI agent with his head up his ass fawning on the press, and generally no content whatever. HACK THE PLANET!
  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @06:15PM (#61901543)

    to have real security you do not comply with all rules and when it's forced to then you just do things that the rules say they can't do / the rules say you can't use X in defense

  • will be sidelined because of their fondness for weed.
    • Or because they first look at who wants to hire them.
    • by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
      Yup, the US Federal Government needs to get off it's high horse when it comes to weed (it's already great at ignoring problems with alcohol and cocaine!) or they're going to have to hire consulting firms at huge rates to ignore the weed for them.
  • by hazem ( 472289 ) on Sunday October 17, 2021 @09:52PM (#61901791) Journal

    A company I once worked at had a 3-day security training that was run as a competition mostly aimed at developers in the company. They used AWS to set up a fake e-retailer for each contestant.

    They'd do a short session about a type of security hack (e.g. SQL injection) then there would be challenges to accomplish some number of hacks (each with points based on difficulty). If you got stuck, there were breakouts where you could talk with other contestants and get clues and hints from the coaches.

    They had a leader board showing the top contestants.

    My main take-away is that hacking requires a lot of creativity on top of technical know-how and I often got stuck with having figured out one way to do a task (e.g. hack the prices in my shopping cart) but couldn't think of the other possible ways that would have gotten me more points.

  • The winner will be the one who can pull the best Kobayashi Maru.
  • 1. They have had these competitions for 3+ years now.

    2. They used the existing system for school and intercollegiate competitions to set up the cyber-security ones. If the results from those can be used as an initial approximation if these ever meet at international level USA will get creamed. The likelihood of an international round ever happening is pretty slim though - NIST in the security area is not exactly a civilian institution and in the Russia/Chinese case it is the military setting up the competitions, not the Universities as is the case in let's say math.

    3. The comment threads on this topic on Slashdot definitely win the "cluelessness" competition. By a large margin.

  • So they think 25 people, all lacking in experience, are enough to fix the issues?

  • The winners will already have planted code they can use at uscybergames.com, NIST and around all of their main competitors.
    Congratulations, China!

  • The entrants must be "Between 18 & 26 years".
    Are you 27 or older ? Go work for the Chinese or the Russians, Uncle Sam only wants younglings.

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