Carnegie Mellon computer science students made an impressive showing earlier this year by taking home the top prize at DefCon’s annual Capture the Flag (CTF) competition, often referred to as the “World Series of Hacking.”
In fact, the CMU Team, named “The Plaid Parliament of Pwning”, has won this competition three out of the last four years. The team began competing in 2010, and won titles in 2013 and 2014 as well.
This latest win comes hot on the heels of CMU spinoff ForAllSecure's win at the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge a few days earlier.
CTF is a popular competitive hacking game, where teams must infiltrate enemy servers while defending their own. Successful security breaches allow a team to capture their oppositions “flag.” While smaller CTF competitions are held around the world, only the best 15 teams can qualify for the DefCon competition.
The win comes at a time when the cyber security field is struggling to find suitable candidates to join the workforce.
"These contests are critically important to developing a skilled cybersecurity workforce," said the team’s faculty adviser. David Brumley, director of Carnegie Mellon's CyLab Security and Privacy Institute and a professor of electrical and computer engineering.
"Our team has put in thousands of hours of practice and it is rewarding to see them win amongst the best hackers in the world. Every year this competition becomes harder and harder to win," Brumley added.
"The consistency of our team's performance over the last four years demonstrates CMU's strength in cybersecurity education and research," said Jim Garrett, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering. "These students will clearly help drive the next level of cybersecurity."
Cybersecurity is a hot topic across multiple industries, as the world becomes more connected and the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more prevalent.
CMU is a school that is taking this connected future seriously, and may be a key contributor to keeping our information secure. For more information, visit the Carnegie Mellon's CyLab Security and Privacy Institute.