The University of Florida Student Information Security Team (UFSIT) placed second in the Global Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) in early January, after winning the Regional Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition in November In addition, the team won the “Cloud 9” and “Best Slide” category awards for their explanation of how an attacker could use information extracted from cloud resources to exploit corporate email and extract sensitive corporate and customer information.
The Global CPTC organizers led a team of 70 computing professionals who volunteered to develop the infrastructure for a social media company and staff its personnel and security operations center. The teams identified vulnerabilities in the company’s software, systems, and network communications as well as the resistance of its personnel to software engineering attacks such as phishing and vishing. The students then spent two days working on the technical test, employing offensive security tools to identify and exploit vulnerabilities to find out what security breaches can be caused by opportunistic attackers.
The teams are then given six hours to complete their comprehensive technical report detailing the company’s strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations for how to remediate the security vulnerabilities.
Dakota State University won first in the competition, held at the Global Cybersecurity Institute in Rochester, New York, with Penn State placing third.
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 team was coached by Professor Joseph N. Wilson.
“This team did an amazing job of getting ready for the competition and their performance reflects that. They ‘ve shown all the members of the UFSIT organization how dedication and preparation yield tangible rewards,” Wilson said.
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