UCF’s student cybersecurity competitors are among the best in the nation, climbing to the No. 8 spot out of 6,510 teams in the U.S. for capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions.
The CTFtime.org ranking, current as of Oct. 13, naturally fluctuates throughout the season as more teams complete competitions. Over the past several weeks, UCF has climbed steadily, following their established trend of earning top-tier rankings year after year. Cyber defense competitors at UCF have developed a reputation for being one of the most formidable opponents not just in the CTF realm, but in college cybersecurity competitions overall.
“UCF’s ‘Knightsec’ CTF team continues to impress year after year, and their success is no accident,” says Tom Nedorost, faculty advisor to UCF’s Collegiate Cyber Defense Club. “Their consistent top-tier performance is a direct result of the students’ relentless dedication, collaborative spirit, and passion for cybersecurity. This season has already shown how deep their bench of talent runs, with new members stepping up and seasoned veterans pushing the envelope in increasingly complex challenges. It’s inspiring to see how they support each other and grow as a team, and I couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve accomplished.”
Most people are familiar with the concept of red team or blue team competitions, which challenge participants to either infiltrate a system or defend it. However, CTF contests are a different type of contest altogether, explains Ardian Peach, CTF competitions director for UCF’s renowned Collegiate Cyber Defense Club, also known as Hack@UCF.
“Capture the flags often tend to be cybersecurity ‘puzzles,’ where many challenges are not necessarily as straight forward as a blue team ‘kick the hacker off our system’ or red team ‘hack into this system’ competition,” he says. “CTFs tend to test one’s abstract reasoning skills within a given technical domain.”
Peach adds that they are set up like Jeopardy, with categories such as reverse engineering, binary exploitation, cryptography, web site exploitation and digital forensics. Each question is assigned a point value, and just like the game show, answering tougher questions earns you more points. The “flag” is a digital string of text in the data, captured when a team answers correctly.
“CTFs definitely test creative problem solving and out of the box thinking a bit more than regular red versus blue competitions, since you can often be thrown a wacky challenge with some new technology unknown to you implemented in a completely unconventional way,” Peach says.
Student interest in cybersecurity has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. Hack@UCF was started by a small group of students in 2012. Just weeks ago, it welcomed more than 300 attendees at this year’s first meeting.
The club’s vast experience in attending contests also gives them the opportunity to give back to the cyber community by developing and hosting their own competitions. Most recently, Hack@UCF hosted Sunshine CTF, an in-person and virtual event that welcomed 1,376 teams.
“The CTF community is also relatively small,” says Peach. “Cybersecurity companies tend to sponsor these events, and saying that you were a top solver at a certain event that a company sponsored helps massively since these cyber companies are very in tune with the cyber competition scene. They know that if someone can solve hard challenges at a well-known CTF event, then they really know their stuff.”
Anthony Marrongelli, a senior studying computer science, is one of the most experienced CTF competitors at Hack@UCF. He has competed in dozens of competitions and spent countless hours preparing for cyber competitions of all types. Last year, he was at competitions almost every weekend.
His hard work has paid off. Marrongelli says he was a top candidate on recruiters’ lists because of his competition experience. His efforts helped him land an internship at Battelle, an applied science and technology nonprofit, where he worked as a vulnerability research and reverse engineering intern.
“After hearing my involvement with Hack@UCF, our renowned cybersecurity club, they were ready to give me the position,” says Marrongelli. “Not only did the competitions themselves give me the skills to get the job, it showed that I was doing more than the average student and getting experience in real-world scenarios.”
- Written by Bel Huston