A group of Highline students are hoping to capture the flag this spring. 

But unlike the childhood game of shouting and running around the neighborhood, this is a cyber defense competition, and the students, members of the Cyber Competition Club, will never leave their desks in pursuit of their goal. 

Cybersecurity challenges, like capturing the flag, offer opportunities to get hands-on experience in computer systems protection. 

“I joined the Cyber Competition Club to explore new fields in computer science and learn new things related to cybersecurity,” said Cyber Competition Club member Yuna Kim. 

Fellow club member Ryan Bennison said that joining the Cyber Competition Club gives students more practice with skills that they learn in class. 

“I found that because we had to learn so much in 11 weeks, there is often not enough time for application of things like server setup and configuration,” Bennison said. “I also just wanted to meet more people at Highline who were in a similar career path as me and get to know them better. The Cyber Competition Club was a great way to supplement my class learning, network with classmates, and experience real life enterprise scenarios without any risks.”

Highline’s Cyber Competition Club has been actively participating in competitions since April 2021. Between team and solo events, students have been involved in 16 different competitions. 

Currently, the Cyber Competition Club is preparing for three upcoming team events. 

This weekend, eight students will be taking on Regionals at the NCAE (National Centers of Academic Excellence) Cybergames. The NCAE competition caters to beginners and first-time competitors from eligible institutions, including Highline. 

The event is formatted as a CTF, or Capture the Flag, competition. CTF exercises work by hiding “flags” in vulnerable programs and challenging competitors to find and take them.

To prepare for these activities, competitors have access to NCAE’s Sandbox. In the Sandbox, competitors can find interactive, game-like tutorials to learn the basics of cyber security prior to the competition. Skills taught in the Sandbox can be used to protect systems in real life.

If Highline progresses beyond regionals, students will have the opportunity to compete again in early April at NCAE Nationals.

Additionally, other Cyber Competition students are preparing for the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. During this event, student teams join Blue Teams which are on the defense, aiming to secure the given network as much as they can. This will be a fresh network that the students will have never seen before.

On the flipside is the Red Team, composed of professional hackers who volunteer to break into these systems and test the network’s security. Outside of cyber competitions, members of the Red Team are often employed as “pen” or penetration testers who simulate cyberattacks to help find weaknesses in programs before they can be exploited.

The Blue student Teams are awarded points based on how they secure their networks in response to the Red Team’s attacks. Additionally, complicating the competition, each student team must also complete several business documents while under attack.

The Pacific Rim competition will occur April 1 – 3 and include teams throughout the Pacific Rim region. Highline’s Cyber Competition club has a team of 11 students registered for the event, with eight students who will be competing. While this event is virtual, Nationals will be hosted in Texas on April 21-23.

Meghan Koester, president of Highline’s Cyber Competition Club, described the competition as both “incredibly stressful” and “super fun.” 

The club is also aiming toward the spring season of the National Cyber League. Highline placed 206th out of 3916 teams in the fall season. Like the NCAE competition, the Cyber League uses a capture the flag format where competitors hack into websites or documents where a flag is embedded.

The Cyber League event will be April 22-24 and includes team and individual competitions. The Cyber Competition Club will have members involved in both competitions.

Competitors are training for the event using the Cyber League’s own training gymnasium, which includes challenges in various topics including open source intelligence and website hacking. The League also provides solution guides so competitors can check their work and sharpen their skills before the event. The Cyber League also offers a pre-competition practice game for competitors to see what the competition will actually be like.

Koester recommended TryHackMe as a way to “learn cyber security through games.” TryHackMe includes an all-inclusive attack space and an attack box with different tools to exploit a system.

Koester is working on her own solo competition with Palo Alto Networks – Secure the Future 2021. Currently, Koester has made it into the top 10 with one final round remaining.

Secure the Future is a research project competition, challenging students to propose innovative solutions on how to “secure the future” of a particular industry. During the 2019 competition, one Highline student placed second overall. Koester said that she is “hoping to carry this forward and do as well.” Her presentation day will be in early March.

“I hope the club continues, even after I graduate,” Koester said. “I hope that we keep competing, because we’ve grown by leaps and bounds since we started. Last year, we were placing within the top 25-30 percent regularly and now we’re placing in the top 10 percent. If we can keep that kind of momentum going for the club, that would be absolutely amazing.”

If you are interested in joining the Cyber Competition Club, you can contact Koester at m_koester@students.highline.edu.