Four Carnegie Mellon students board a flight from Pittsburgh to New York City. They have a weekend stay planned, but this is no tourist trip for Andrew Wesie (CS'11), David Kohlbrenner (CS'11), Brian Pak (CS'11), and Tyler Nighswander (CS'13). With laptops in tow, they're gearing up for two days of computer hacking. They are competing against "300 of the country's best students of cyber security" at the 7th Annual Cyber Security Awareness Week Challenges at Polytechnic Institute of New York University. The competition is meant to bring together the next generation of computer science professionals who will think of proper cybersecurity measures as a necessity, not as an afterthought.
Competition is nothing new to the foursome. Last spring, they traveled to South Korea for CodeGate 2010, a security conference held by the Korean government, where they competed against "the best hackers in the world." Not only did they leave Korea with the second-place prize, they took home with them a newfound taste for Korean food.
For the NYU competition, a simulated Web site has been constructed for quizzes and scavenger-hunt battles. In the Capture the Flag Applications Challenge, the collegiate teams must discover within the Web site red flags that indicate security breaches-minutia that would go unnoticed by those whose everyday use of the Internet rarely extends beyond Web searches. Kohlbrenner says they find themselves facing a challenge they discussed just the week before in their "Introduction to Computer & Network Security & Applied Cryptography" class-good thing they paid attention. In reality, they were prepared for just about anything. "It's hard for most people to comprehend the time, dedication, and lack of sleep that goes into preparing for these events," says Kohlbrenner, who reveals that they only had about three hours of sleep the night before the competition.
At the NYU competition, their dedication again reaps benefits as they win the Capture the Flag contest. In another event, the quiz tournament, Carnegie Mellon also comes away victorious.
Afterward, the Tartan teammates have some time for a meal in Manhattan before catching their flight back to Pittsburgh. They track down some Korean food.
-Emily Kinnaird
