This November, Messiah University’s Cyber Competition Team participated in the weekend-long National Cyber League (NCL) competition. With increasing turnout to our cybersecurity club this year, students decided to split into two teams to allow all to compete. The first team, competing with 2 upperclassmen and 4 underclassmen, started on Friday and met up Saturday evening to work on the challenges together. The second team, competing with 3 upperclassmen, worked periodically throughout the weekend and met for many hours on Sunday.
As the event concluded on Sunday evening, the team gathered for a recap meeting. Messiah’s team of 7 completed close to 75% of all challenges and placed in the top 5% of all teams. Meanwhile, Messiah’s team of 3 completed close to 45% of all challenges and placed lower. Each student mentioned enjoying the competition and finding it a challenging learning experience. The team’s cyber skills were sharpened in various areas such as cryptography, traffic analysis, web app exploitation and more.
Coming up for the Messiah team is the annual Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) held during spring semester, as well as the NCAE Cyber Games. Students have prepared this past fall and will be coordinating quickly after coming back to get ready for qualifiers. The team is excited to introduce new talent to the competition environment and continue learning new skills. Stay tuned for updates!
Thanks to Ryan, junior cyber student, for writing this post.