Center News

Cybersecurity Competitions @ UConn

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The Synchrony center hosted CyberSEED 2023 on March 4th. The Connecticut Advanced Computing Center (CACC) and CyberSEED bring together dozens of universities and colleges to compete in unique cybersecurity challenges for awesome prizes. The top three teams this year were University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of North Georgia and Michigan Technological University. UConn placed 7th and 8th in the top 10 ranking.

This was another fantastic edition with 333 registrations and 118 teams who participated in the event. The competition was fierce! The table below offers a summary of the top-10, prize winning teams! The maximum score attainable was 2700. Once more, we would like to extend my congratulations to the roster below as well as to all the participants. We hope it was as much fun for you to engage in and we look forward to see you again!

Results

Rank School Team Name Points Accuracy
1 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign SIGwny 2495 98.85%
2 University of North Georgia NullPTR 2395 87.50%
3 Michigan Technological University CyberSNEED_v2 2390 93.41%
4 University of Central Florida KnightSec 2310 85.00%
5 Florida Institute of Technology FITSEC - Knights of the Hash Table 2265 82.83%
6 Syracuse University OttoLock 2225 78.30%
7 University of Connecticut The Heinous Hominids 2165 58.82%
8 University of Connecticut The distinguished gentlemen of UConn Cybersecurity Club 2150 85.57%
9 California State University - Fullerton CSUF 2145 73.87%
10 University of Tulsa Shadow Wizard Money Gang 2145 65.04%

CyberSEED Returns in Virtual Format

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students at cyberseed

By: Eli Freund, Editorial Communications Manager, UConn School of Engineering

After a postponement last year, the annual CyberSEED event, hosted by Synchrony and The Connecticut Advanced Computing Center (CACC), is back on in a 100 percent virtual format.

CyberSEED 2021, which will take place on March 27, from 8:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m., will host teams from schools all over the United States, who will compete in a Capture the Flag-style competition focusing on a variety of cybersecurity challenges including a set of flags focusing on reverse engineering, web application security, network traffic analysis, cryptography, amongst others on the Cyber Skyline platform.

Student teams of 2-4 people will have the opportunity to win cash prices of between $250 to $3,000, hear from a panel of experts, and also get a chance to meet and hear from Synchrony’s own Chief Information Security Officer Gleb Reznik. The top three winners from last year’s competition included: Drexel University, University of Maryland, and New York University.

Synchrony and UConn Engineering Join Forces to Host CyberSEED 2019

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STORRS, CT – During National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Synchrony, a premier consumer financial services company, and The University of Connecticut School of Engineering are joining forces to sponsor CyberSEED 2019, a cyber wargame competition, on Saturday, October 19th from 9am to 5:30pm.

More than forty-two teams from 30 colleges and universities across the country will face off in a variety of challenges that test students’ skills, including: reverse engineering, web application security, network traffic analysis, and cryptography. The grand prize winner will take home $15,000; there will also be two smaller prizes of $2,000 and $500.

Registration for the competition is closed, but registration for a concurrent workshop will remain open through 17 October.

WHAT: CyberSEED – a cyber Capture the Flag competition and Workshop

WHEN: Saturday, October 19th

9:00am – opening remarks

9:30am – competition commences

5:00pm – competition ends

5:30pm – awards and closing

The workshop runs concurrently with the Capture the Flag competition.

WHERE: UConn Storrs Campus — Rome Commons Ballroom

Contact:

Jeannette Burke (UConn) Engr-cyberseed@uconn.edu

Nicole Ward (Synchrony) Nicole.Ward@syf.com

Technical (Synchrony) mark.underwood@syf.com

Michel Appointed Synchrony Financial Chair for Cybersecurity

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By: Eli Freund, Editorial Communications Manager, UConn School of Engineering

Luarent Michel (left) and Stephen Altschuler
Photos from an event for the new Altschuler Cybersecurity Lab taken Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at UConn Information Technologies Engineering Building in Storrs. (G.J. McCarthy / UConn Foundation)

The UConn School of Engineering is pleased to announce the appointment of Laurent Michel, a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department, as the next Synchrony Financial Chair for Cybersecurity. Michel’s appointment was approved by the UConn Board of Trustees during their meeting on December 11, 2019.

The position, established by a generous donation from Synchrony Financial in 2016, is aimed at supporting a leader focused on the advancement of education and research in cybersecurity. In addition to the endowed professorship, Synchrony Financial also has a presence in the UConn Tech Park, with the Synchrony Financial Center of Excellence, which is currently led by Michel.

Michel is an internationally recognized expert in the area of cybersecurity and received a B.S. and an Sc.M. in computer science from “Les Facultes Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix” (‘93) in Namur, Belgium. He later received Sc.M. (‘96) and Ph.D. (‘99) degrees in computer science from Brown University.

He is an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and has served his professional field as the President for the International Association for Constraint Programming (2015-2018). At UConn, Michel currently serves as the Director of the Synchrony Financial Center of Excellence in Cybersecurity, as co-Director of the Comcast Center of Excellence for Security Innovation, and as co-Director of the Connecticut Cybersecurity Center. His work has been continually funded by federal and state agencies and by industry, including Comcast, Alstom Grid, ISO New England and others. His work in automation, resource allocation, configuration and side-channel attacks are directly pertinent to many industries, including financial, transportation, health care, and manufacturing. Michel is a leader of outreach and community engagement, organizing activities such as the CyberSEED competition for young, aspiring computer scientists held at UConn. He remains engaged with the State of Connecticut as a founding member of the Voting Technology Research Center, which allowed the State to become a leader in election security. He has co-authored 2 monographs, edited 1 book, has published more than 100 articles, and served as Associate CSE Department Head from 2014 to 2018.

For more information on Michel and his work, please click here to be brought to his academic page.

Cybersecurity Experts Come To UConn For CyberSEED

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University of Connecticut Provost Mun Choi, Connecticut State Representative Matthew Lesser (D-Middletown), Comcast Cable Cybersecurity Governance, Risk and Compliance Vice President Ramesh Sepehrrad, U.S. Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT), and UConn Engineering Dean Kazem Kazerounian at the recent CyberSEED event. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

From left: University of Connecticut Provost Mun Choi, Conn. Rep. Matthew Lesser, Comcast Cable Cybersecurity Governance, Risk and Compliance Vice President Ramesh Sepehrrad, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, and UConn Engineering Dean Kazem Kazerounian at the recent CyberSEED event. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

The University of Connecticut’s Comcast Center of Excellence for Security Innovation recently hosted CyberSEED 2016. Speakers from around the country shared perspectives on cybersecurity issues and the importance of strengthening online defenses in vital areas.

“This is almost an existential challenge for the country, and frankly it’s going to be a persistent one, for decades to come,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney at the conference.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal meets with the cybersecurity competition team from the U.S. Coast Guard.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal met with the cybersecurity competition team from the U.S. Coast Guard. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy joined CyberSEED by teleconference. Video from his statement is available below. (Photo from Sen. Murphy’s website)

Courtney said that the importance of cybersecurity has been emphasized by the news recently.

“As we know from last Friday, when the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security basically came right out bluntly and said ‘this is an attack that came from another nation state, from Russia,’ this issue just keeps escalating- in terms of the threat to whole sectors that have been totally caught off guard.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal echoed Courtney’s commitment to cybersecurity. He discussed the devastating effect that cybercrime can have on citizens, and talked about the need for internet companies to report security breaches in a timely manner.

“A national breach notification standard would help to make sure that consumers are alerted when their sensitive personal information is in the public realm and potentially vulnerable to abuse through identity theft,” Blumenthal said.
hartley

One of the most anticipated talks of the event was from the tech team behind Mr. Robot, the acclaimed television show on the USA Network. The team emphasized the hard work that went into making Mr. Robot accurate from a hacking standpoint.

“What you saw in the seasons, the accuracy that we’ve made, it took a lot of work. A lot of hours at 3 a.m. and text messages at all times of the day,” said Andre McGregor, Director of Security at Tanium. McGregor was previously an FBI Supervisory Special Agent in the Cyber Division, and used that experience to guide the show when it intersected with law enforcement.

One of the recurring topics of the conference was the need to move beyond a coconut model of security, where there is a hard outer shell with a vulnerable system once that shell has been bypassed. This approach not only gives an outside hacker a clear point where they have succeeded, it also leaves a network vulnerable to attacks from within.
The Mr. Robot Panel. From Left are Andre McGregor, Director of Security, Tanium; James Plouffe, Lead Solutions Architect, MobileIron; Ryan Kazanciyan, Chief Security Architect, Tanium; and Dave Kennedy, Founder and Principal Security Consultant, TrustedSec.com.

The Mr. Robot Panel. From Left are Andre McGregor, Director of Security, Tanium; James Plouffe, Lead Solutions Architect, MobileIron; Ryan Kazanciyan, Chief Security Architect, Tanium; and Dave Kennedy, Founder and Principal Security Consultant, TrustedSec.com. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

“Every attacker is going to be a potential insider; whether you start on the inside of a network or you’re an external adversary who goes out to breech the perimeter and establish a foothold on the internal network and move from there,” said Sean Malone, chief strategy officer for FusionX.

Malone said that this hardened outer shell approach could lead to a game over mentality when, inevitably, the outer shell is breached.

“It should be as complex or more complex to achieve the objective on the internal network as it is to get there in the first place,” he said.

To view the CyberSEED conferences, visit their Youtube page.

First CyberSEED Event Combines Cybersecurity Competition and Discussion

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First CyberSEED Event Combines Cybersecurity Competition and Discussion

More than 350 people attended the first-ever CyberSEED Cybersecurity, Education & Diversity Challenge, an event that combined expert speakers and three cybersecurity competitions.

The two-day conference took place Oct. 20 and 21 and was organized by the Center of Excellence for Security Innovation (CSI), a partnership between Comcast and the UConn School of Engineering’s Center for Hardware Assurance, Security, and Engineering (CHASE).

“I think we exceeded the expectations in many ways,” said Mark Tehranipoor, Director, Comcast Center of Excellence (CSI). “Because this was the first CyberSEED event for us, we thought ‘Well, we’ll use it as an experience and learn from this.’ But within a couple months, it became clear that we didn’t have time for ‘learning from this.’ We just have to take it to the next level right away.”

The ambitious event brought more than 40 teams from universities across the U.S. to the UConn campus to compete in three unique cybersecurity challenges for more than $100,000 in prizes. The competition played out over the two days in the same venue – the Lewis B. Rome Commons – that hosted some of most respected experts in the field of cybersecurity.

The conference featured more than 20 speakers, including keynote addresses from Rear Admiral David Simpson (ret.), Chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau; Cheri Caddy, Director for Cybersecurity Policy Integration and Outreach, National Security Staff, The White House; and Donna Dodson, Chief Cyber Security Advisor, NIST.

Speakers and panel discussions addressed a wide range of topics related to cybersecurity – from protecting against international-level cyberattacks, to how businesses can protect their customers. Tehranipoor said he was particularly impressed with the panel discussions that featured all three of the major players in cybersecurity.

“When you bring academia, government and industry into one room and let them talk, I think it’s extremely beneficial,” he said. “The three sides have to hear each other.”

Each is coming at the issue with a slightly different approach, he said, especially in regard to confidentiality. Talking with each other helps resolve those differences.

“At events likes these, they come together and talk about what they want, and I think there’s always ways to come up with common ground,” he said. “I think meeetings like this could have a major impact in the way we address cybersecurity issues.”

The conference also featured a VIP tour of the CSI lab, which opened earlier this year. Tehranipoor and John Chandy, Associate Head of Electrical and Computer Engineering, led guests through the lab and showcased the technology that’s coming out of it.

Sponsors for CyberSEED included Microsoft, Dell, HP, Symantec, CA Technologies, Juniper Networks, Accenture, Veracode, Wipro, PWC and Cyveillance.

Cybersecurity Contest Challenges Teams to Think Like a Hacker

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By William Weir

(UConn Today)

University of New Haven team members discuss strategy in the Capture the Flag competition, during a two-day cybersecurity conference organized by the Center of Excellence for Security Innovation, a partnership between Comcast and the UConn School of Engineering's Center for Hardware Assurance, Security, and Engineering. Their coach, Frank Breitinger, will teach a course next semester called “Hacking.” (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

Computer hackers descended upon UConn this past week, and for their efforts, came away with more than $100,000 in prize money.

Teams from 43 colleges including UConn gathered at the Lewis B. Rome Commons Ballroom to take part in various challenges at CyberSEED, a two-day cybersecurity conference that also featured speakers and panel discussions. Rear Adm. David Simpson, chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, gave a talk about the state of national and international cybersecurity.

The conference, which took place Oct. 21-22, was organized by the Center of Excellence for Security Innovation (CSI), a partnership between Comcast and UConn School of Engineering’s Center for Hardware Assurance, Security, and Engineering (CHASE). It was the first of what is planned to be an annual event.

University of New Haven team members discuss strategy in the Capture the Flag competition, during a two-day cybersecurity conference organized by the Center of Excellence for Security Innovation, a partnership between Comcast and the UConn School of Engineering’s Center for Hardware Assurance, Security, and Engineering. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

The competitions featured both software and hardware challenges, but the most popular was Capture the Flag. Here, teams hacked away at classified files of the fictitious country Cyberia, acting on behalf of the small neighboring nation Sanctus Pirata. The files provided details of the country’s oil rigs, allowing the smaller nation to tap into them if successful.

Teams came from as far as Washington State and New Mexico. Some were veterans of hacking competitions, others complete novices. Coming to UConn for their first hacking competition, East Tennessee State University flew into Connecticut at 2 a.m. Energy drinks and coffee figured heavily in their strategy. Their coach, computer science professor Mike Lehrfeld, said the team members had spent much of the past few weeks discussing strategies and different scenarios they might encounter.

“The competition allows them to showcase what they’ve worked on all year long,” he said.

 

The team from Syracuse University hacks away for classified files in the Capture the Flag competition. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

In the end, it was Brown University who took top honors based on speed and the number of documents uncovered. They won $15,000 for first place. Overall, more than $100,000 was awarded to winning teams. No one went away empty-handed: every participant received a Samsung tablet.

So how do you prepare for a hacking competition?

“Lots of YouTube video, lots of Googling,” said Andrew Rector, a senior with the team from Bloomsburg University in central Pennsylvania. Even though they were taking on the role of the bad guys, he said, “these kinds of efforts will pay off for the good guys. You need to know how a system is vulnerable before you can protect it.”

Indeed, conference speaker Cheri Caddy, director of cybersecurity policy integration and outreach at the White House, told the audience that security efforts have lagged because of a lack of training in the field.

Michael Garvin, senior manager of product management for Symantec, was one of the architects of the Capture the Flag competition. They devise their games partly by current events – who’s committing cyberattacks and why – and from feedback from companies who want to protect their security.

These competitions, he said, are a way of identifying vulnerabilities in a company’s computer system.

“We’ll ask companies ‘What is it that you’re worried about?’ Then we can prevent those things from happening, or lessen the amount of damage,” he said. “We’ve seen some interesting and novel methods in these competitions – all the better to help us prepare.”

CyberSEED in the Media and Social Media

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Print, television and online news media came to UConn last week to cover the first-ever CyberSEED Cybersecurity, Education & Diversity Challenge, an event that brought together talks from cybersecurity experts and three cybersecurity competitions.

The Hartford Courant focused on the labor shortage in cybersecurity:

“We just have not been training enough people to man the defenses of every business at work, every government at work, every military mission,” said Cheri Caddy, director of cybersecurity policy integration and outreach at the White House. “We need to do more.”

Go here to read the rest of reporter Ken Gosselin’s article.

To see photos from the two-day event, go to UConn Engineering’s Flickr account:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/uconnengineering/sets/72157648999589895/

CyberSEED: Cybersecurity, Education & Diversity Challenge Week Takes Place in October

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The Comcast Center of Excellence for Security Innovation (CSI) is sponsoring the first-ever CyberSEED: Cybersecurity, Education & Diversity Challenge Week.

Taking place Oct. 20 and 21, the event features:

  • Networking and recruiting opportunities for professionals and students16 CPE credits for certified members attending CyberSEED
  • 30 universities competing in three unique challenges for $100K in prize
  • Complementary attendance with travel stipend for students participating in competitions
  • Keynote addresses and sessions from academic, government, and industry leaders
  • Awareness presentations on cybercrime, malware, and evolving threats

For more information, go to the event’s website: http://www.csi.uconn.edu/cybersecurity-week