What looks like Capture the Flag from the outside is actually securing and strengthening critical networks on the inside.

The East Tennessee State University student cybersecurity team, Cyberbucs, participated and finished 12th in the semester-long MITRE Corporation Embedded Capture the Flag (eCTF) competition. This hands-on learning experience pitted ETSU’s cybersecurity team against 160 other teams, all trying to attack and disrupt their system.  

Hosted within the College of Business and Technology’s Department of Computing, the Cyberbucs bring together students dedicated to securing the future of online systems.

Defense

During the competition, the Cyberbucs system endured 35 days without cracking, showing strong resilience against repeated attacks.

With the challenge of designing and implementing a secure storage solution for a chip foundry, the system had to allow users with different roles to access the proper data without leaking sensitive chip designs to unauthorized parties.

“Working through real-world attack scenarios and developing functional exploits pushed us to think at a much deeper level about vulnerability analysis and secure system design,” said Robert Brown, Cyberbucs student team lead.

Offense

On the other side of the ball, the Cyberbucs were able to successfully extract flags from 17 other teams during the competition.

While the students engage in competition, these exercises give them a glimpse of the challenges they will face in a cybersecurity career in a safe, controlled environment. In the real world, those attempting to breach systems are often highly skilled, malicious actors, and cybersecurity professionals have to serve as the opposing force, working to detect, defend and prevail against those threats.

“This competition provided students with hands-on experience in defending real-world embedded systems against advanced adversarial techniques,” said Biju Bajracharya, associate professor of computing and Cyberbucs faculty adviser. “Experiences like this are critical in preparing the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.”

The competition also highlights ETSU’s recent designation as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE-CD). Through opportunities like this, computing students are demonstrating their ability to compete at a high level with peers across the country.