This course prepares students to participate in national and international cyber competitions. Two competition archetypes are explored in detail: Capture The Flag (CTF) and jeopardy. Students will gain practical experience in these competition archetypes, as well as specific competition subtypes, through a rigorous schedule of hands-on challenges, laboratory exercises, and full scale competitions. This course will explore strategies of game play within the competition archetypes; review the skills necessary to compete in cyber competitions, as well as the cognitive science that empowers competitions as learning devices. Individual classes will be a mixture of lecture, laboratory exercises, as well as puzzle solving. The course will conclude with students participating in a real cyber competition.
Learning Objectives
- Discuss the main archetypes of cyber competitions and identify the various challenges participants encounter within each archetype.
- Demonstrate a basic technical acumen in the critical areas of cybersecurity as necessary to participate in cyber competitions. Such acumen includes cryptography, digital forensics, network security, and software reverse engineering.
- Discuss prominent puzzle-based learning strategies as such apply to the primary cyber competition archetypes.
- Demonstrate a fundamental level of proficiency in the most common challenges encountered in cyber competitions.
- Operate independently or as part of a small team as may be necessary to succeed in cyber competition.
- Work proficiently in two of three primary Operating Systems (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X); including installing tools, troubleshooting, and modifying the system as necessary to achieve cyber competition goals.