CyberPatriot XII gets underway in Yuma

Team 508 welcomes CyberPatriot XII to Yuma

Two days ago, on Saturday June 1, Team 508 took its first step to participate in the new CyberPatriot XII competition. Eight cadets, 2 senior members, and our new mentor met in the squadron conference room to work through practice images of Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16 operating systems during Exhibition Round 1. We went through the routine of opening images in VMWARE, checking the readme files, answering the forensic questions, and then working through checklists to identify and fix security vulnerabilities. As always, everyone got a kick out of the points scoring klaxon. In fact, absence of the expected aural prompt was so disturbing that adjustment of the mute setting on my computer was a necessity at the outset.

Our checklists have been updated over the past two years of competition so we were able to earn all the points available on both operating systems. Instructors made the point to the cadets that things start to get more difficult (and educational) from here on as the competition year progresses. I was encouraged by the level of cadet participation in this early round. We have not taken advantage of the Exhibition Rounds in past years. Those attending seemed interested in future training opportunities. I will plan to include more training sessions in our busy schedule. For the first time our video team even took some time to tape activities and record interviews with participants. I hope to be able to provide further information about the video project once the final edit is completed.

We are actively recruiting for our Basic (July 24-26) and Advanced (July 31-August 2) CyberCamps that are scheduled for this summer. This will be the first time that Team 508 has hosted these camps. I have looked through the instructor’s guides for both camps. There is huge educational potential. We will be working with Windows  and Ubuntu images and will introduce Cisco Networking and its associated PacketTracer application. The camps will be a great foundation for the coming competition and for opportunities in computer security further down the line.