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PROVO -- A group of BYU students were able to show off their hacking skills in a competition this summer.
The group of four computer science students from BYU's Internet Security Research Lab took first place in a cyber capture-the-flag competition. The contest was designed to test students' abilities to legally break through defenses they would normally try to build.
The team consisted of undergraduate students Austin Whipple and Kin Hou Lei and graduate students Kimball Germane and Scott Ruoti.
The competition, held July 19 and 20, was sponsored by a group of organizations interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics outreach. It was free for all participants.
BYU "quickly raced to the lead" and never lost it, according to Dr. Kent Seamons, director of the ISRL. The team collected seven awards--twice that of any other team--and even forced the administrators to invent the Root Award, which recognized the BYU team for subverting a system in a way the organizers hadn't anticipated.
Whipple was able to gain an administrator level log-on for the system, enabling the team to find flags from an administrator's birds-eye view.
"A good administrator should not allow someone else to take over a system," said Seamons." Austin compromised the system in a way they were not expecting."
The first-place placement earned the team an invitation to the August DEFCON conference in Las Vegas.
