On Nov. 3, 2018, Cyber Blazers, Hood College’s ethical hacking student team, competed in the sixth MAGIC Capture the Flag competition. Cyber Blazers finished 8th out of the 45 teams who competed.
This is the team’s second competition that they participated in as part of their training. The Cyber Blazers team consists of students Junyan Huang, Robert Patton and Vincent Yu, and coach Dr. Carol Jim, computer science and information technology department.
The Mid-Atlantic Gigabit Innovation Collaboratory (MAGIC) Capture the Flag competition is a national and international ethical hacking cybersecurity competition for high school and college students. The teams of up to four students use hacking tools to solve puzzles and earn points in a Jeopardy-game format.
Dr. Jim helped to organize and train the Cyber Blazers for this competition. “This semester we held joint practices with Frederick Community College (FCC) and Mount St. Mary's University,” she said. “This hacking competition provided an opportunity for the students to improve their skills in different cybersecurity domains such as open source intelligence, scanning, enumeration and exploitation, log analysis, web application exploitation, and much more. It also provided a platform for the students to work in a team-based environment and enhance their communication skills among team members.”
Hood student Vincent Yu, mentioned, “the competition definitely met my expectations of being both fun and a good challenging experience as well. Junyan and Roger were a pleasure to be around, we were all competing for the same fun experience. It was definitely a surprise to see we placed 8th on the final scoreboard.” Vincent also shares his tips for future participants, “For any students that are thinking about joining the team, have interest in cybersecurity, or really just enjoy hands-on learning with computers; I definitely recommend giving it a shot! I honestly came into the team knowing absolutely nothing about cybersecurity but with the sole interest in cybersecurity and the desire for hands-on experience.”
Dr. Jim encourages all Hood students with an interest in developing high-level defensive and offensive cyber skills and problem solving to consider joining the Cyber Blazers team. The team is looking for enthusiastic students who are up for a challenge while working as a team in a fun, relaxed environment. If interested, please contact Dr. Jim, at jim@hood.edu.
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