The University of Florida Student Information Security Team (UFSIT) placed first in the Southeast Regional Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) held in Augusta, Georgia. The top three teams were all from Florida, with the University of South Florida finishing in second place and the University of Central Florida finishing third.
“The strength of Florida teams in the southeast region is reminiscent of SEC football.
The high level of competition in the region is unmatched in the country at large.
I’m especially pleased that UF was able to lead the way this year,” said Joseph Wilson, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering and the team’s coach.
UFSIT will compete against 11 other teams in the Global Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition held in Rochester, New York, in January. This team has had previous success in the regional competition with a second-place finish in 2023 and another first-place finish in 2021.
This year’s team was captained by Ayden Colby and comprised of Adam Hassan, Yuliang Huang, Daniel Aguirre, Avigail Laing and Tristan Ratchev. Ben Ruddy and Naresh Panchal served as alternates.
The competition required the teams to conduct a penetration test engagement for the fictitious company “FlakeBook.” The teams assessed the security of a network of computers providing a wide variety of services and identified numerous possible security flaws and vulnerabilities. They then exploited those vulnerabilities to identify the potential risk they could pose for the “FlakeBook” organization.
Additionally, teams interacted with several “FlakeBook” employees to address issues that needed resolution. The students had access to “FlakeBook” systems for eight hours of testing. Once the testing was completed, they spent the next seven hours preparing a 60+ page report identifying the state of “FlakeBook’s” information systems, relevant security findings, possible mitigations and best practices the company could employ to improve their security.
If you would like to learn more about UFSIT, you can visit their website at https://ufsit.club.
By Drew Brown
Marketing and Communications Specialist