The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition

Architecture and Background

Greg White: The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Abstract: Security competitions have been of interest to many individuals for a number of years. The popularity of the annual DEFCON competition demonstrates the level of interest in these events. This talk will discuss the creation of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition which was held in April 2006. A brief history covering the development of this competition will be covered as well as a discussion of the event itself. The results of the competition will be presented as well as the lessons learned from it and the plans to hold similar future events. A description of the hardware and software used as well as the network configuration and red team composition and activity will also be addressed.

Vulnerability Analysis

Bio: Dr. Gregory White has been involved in computer and network security since 1986. He spent 19 years on active duty with the Air Force and is currently in the Air Force Reserves assigned to the Pentagon. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1995. His dissertation topic was in the area of Computer Network Intrusion Detection and he continues to conduct research in this area.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

He is currently the Director for the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security and is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Dr. White has been involved in security instruction for a number of years. He taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy for seven years where he developed and taught two courses on Computer Security and Information Warfare. For the last two years, he has been heavily involved in developing and promoting the idea of conducting an annual collegiate cyber security competition.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

In 2002, Dr. White was chosen to direct the Dark Screen cyber terrorist exercise conducted in San Antonio, Texas. This exercise, the first of its kind, brought together over 225 individuals from the military, various levels of government, industry and academia to examine the ability of San Antonio, Bexar County and surrounding region to react to a cyber attack on the area?s critical infrastructures. The event, which also had representatives from state and federal agencies, received national attention and expanded its scope to an even larger exercise in 2003. Since then he has been in charge of other sector-based and community exercises around the country. Dr. White has written and presented numerous articles and conference papers on security. He is also the co-author for six textbooks on computer and network security and has written chapters included in two other security books.