Carnegie Mellon Student Team Competes in Global Electronic Computer War Games
April 1, 2010
Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776
PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University engineering and computer science students are putting their computer skills to competitive use as members of the award-winning "Capture The Flag" team.
David
Brumley, an assistant professor in the university's Electrical and Computer
Engineering (ECE) Department and Carnegie Mellon CyLab, said "Capture The Flag"
is a computer security war game in which each participating team or individual
competes to find a key source of information by solving a litany of challenging
problems.
"The
game and the team concept is great because it allows students to hone skills
and better understand web hacking, binary reverse engineering, exploitation of
information, forensics and cryptography," said Brumley, the team's advisor.
Brian
Pak, a junior in computer science, said the team is focused on building new
skills and learning to work and compete in a global environment. Typical
challenges include finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in programs and
breaking encrypted messages.
"It
has really been a wonderful learning experience because each competition is
different and we get to expand our knowledge base," said Sang Kil Cha, an ECE
Ph.D. student.
In
addition to Pak and Cha, team members include: Joseph Lee, a freshman in ECE;
Tyler Nighswander, a freshman in computer science; Ricky Zhou, a sophomore in
computer science; David Kohlbrenner, a junior in computer science; Andrew
Wesie, a junior in computer science; Information Networking Institute master's
degree students Jonathan Cooke and Joseph Ceirante; Ed Schwartz, Thanassis
Avgerinos, Andrew Tran and Jiyong Jang, all Ph.D. students in ECE; JongHyup
Lee, a post- doctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon CyLab; and Michael Stroucken
and Ivan Jager, both staffers in ECE.
Team members have competed in more than seven international competitions
during the 2009-2010 academic year. They have placed in the top four spots in
all but one competition. And they earned first place in the 8th
Annual HUST Creative and Fun Capture the Flag Competition in Seoul, South
Korea, last year. The competitions are grueling, often lasting up to 48 hours.
"The
latest accomplishment was beating out more than 100 other teams and placing
first in the qualifying rounds of CodeGate. That placement won them four
airline tickets to the final round hosted in Seoul, South Korea. I know they
will make Carnegie Mellon proud," Brumley said.
For additional information, please see http://ppp.cylab.cmu.edu.