PRCCDC 2009

Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition: 2009

• Description
• UW Tacoma Team and Pictures
• Director of CIAC's Comments

Description

A very successful collegiate competition focused on computer and network security and administration was held at one of Microsoft's Bellevue facilities on March 28-29, 2009, sponsored by various companies and educational institutions.

About 50 students from assorted Pacific Rim universities and community/technical colleges, including UW Tacoma's Institute of Technology, competed as teams under the banner of their respective educational institutions. These teams made valiant attempts to defend their fictitious company's computing assets from attackers (the "red" team of security professionals) while they performed system and network administration tasks assigned to them by equally fictitious company bosses. The scenario attempted to duplicate, in an intense, two-day event, what computing professionals might encounter if hired into a poorly-administered environment. The teams were judged (by the "white" team) on how well they performed the assigned tasks as well as how available their network services were.

Participating were University of Alaska, Whatcom Community College, Highline Community College, UWT, UW CSE, UW I-School, and DeVry. UW CSE won, and will continue on to the National Competition in April at San Antonio.

The event was the culmination of months of planning by a team of security-minded volunteers, headed by Dr. Barbara Endicott-Popovsky of the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity at UW Seattle. Don McLane, a lab support engineer at the Institute of Technology, coordinated UW Tacoma's effort, securing the loan of Cisco networking equipment, advising UW Tacoma student Rick Davidson as Rick prepared the Cisco routers, supplying workstations for the non-student teams, training the UW Tacoma team, providing insight on the operation of a competition from the previous competition, and much more.

Here you can see the event in a series of pictures taken by Don McLane.

UW Tacoma Team and Pictures

UW Tacoma's team consisted of: Gary Belvin, Justin Carton, Darin Cyr, Matthew Fiebig, Daniel De Jager, Kenny Kong, Lynetta Gray, and Parker Thompson.

Pictures of the UW Tacoma team in action (photos by Don McLane)

It's interesting to note that three members of the Red Team were graduates of UWT — Andrew Becherer, John Hernandez and Mary Jane Kelly — suggesting that the Institute of Technology is preparing students well to enter the security industry.

Director of CIAC's Comments

Here is what Dr. Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, Director of the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, had to say about the event:

March 28-29, the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, in collaboration with over 50 volunteers from Northwest academic and business communities and with generous support from Microsoft, successfully held the 2nd Annual Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (PRCCDC) with seven university and community college teams competing. Over the two-day period, each team was charged with maintaining an eight-workstation network while sustaining and repelling cyber attacks from a team of professional penetration testers. UWTV’s documentary from last year’s competition provides an understanding of the event, its organization and its outcomes for students. (This has become a popular site with downloads in the thousands!)

Competing teams represented the University of Washington CSE Dept, the University of Washington Tacoma Institute of Technology, the University of Washington iSchool, DeVry University, Highline Community College, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Whatcom County Community College. The point scores this year were tightly grouped with only a few percentage points separating the top three teams. The improvement in scores reflects hours of preparation which means all teams win—their knowledge grows; their skills improve. This year’s winning team, comes from the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington Seattle campus. They will compete in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition to be held in San Antonio, Texas April 17-19. We wish them the best as they represent our region.

Collaboration

The event was made possible through a close collaboration among members of the community, academia and industry. Microsoft’s generosity extended beyond providing the venue, logistics and funding for the equipment to include numerous volunteers who helped during set up and the competition. Cisco provided routing and switching equipment. To staff the contest, Casaba Corporation, Internap, Microsoft, the University of Idaho, and the University of Washington cooperated in organizing the team of penetration testers. Idaho State University provided a team of judges from their information assurance graduate program, augmented by volunteers from the McChord Air Force base cyber unit. The organizing committee was a collaboration of several schools and universities: Brian Hay, University of Alaska Fairbanks provided the contest architecture and images, Don McLane and Rick Davidson from the University of Washington Tacoma Institute of Technology provided network design and implementation, Bob Bunge, DeVry University, provided the web presence scoring engine for the contest and contest documentation.

Outcomes

Students are the central focus of this pedagogical event which exposes them to other schools, a network of professionals, career opportunities, new knowledge. Sixteen hours of concentrated effort to manage a network provides intensive education that allows students to integrate and apply what they have learned in their respective curricula. The atmosphere of a competition sharpens focus--everyone wins in this environment.

Future Work

Complicating the event this year was the unexpected eruption of Mt Redoubt in Alaska that caused added delays in setting up the infrastructure. As a result, we plan to virtualize the environment next year. Microsoft continues to express interest in this event for next year. After analyzing this year’s results, we will begin planning for 2010 and welcome suggestions for improvement.

Absent from this description of the event is a recognition of Dr. Endicott-Popovsky's contributions, which include her tireless coordination and promotion of the event.

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