When you think of students playing capture the flag, a first thought is of them running around a field playing tag and trying to grab a physical flag from their opponent’s side. What if we were to tell you that this capture the flag was held online and was training the next generation of cyber security professionals?
Well, this is the case for the AFCEA Hawaii Student Capture the Flag (CTF) event that was held from Oct 20th-Nov 3rd 2022 by Pacific Technologies and Solutions.
So what did this CTF look like? It was modeled to look like a videogame, so it was fun & engaging for the students. The preliminary round was held in October virtually over 3 days and over 14 schools across Hawai’i participated in online challenges to earn points and battle for a spot at the in-person final round.
First, they were all given a set of rules, like don’t hack the other teams or the site. Then they were taught how to VPN to a site where there was a jeopardy-style board with cyber tasks, and all the answers had to be hashed (for example, if the answer was the letter q, then the hash would be: 7694f4a66316e53c8cdd9d9954bd611d
The topics included:
- Trivia
- Recon
- Analysis
- Decoding
- Exploit
- OSINT
And students were taught how to use advanced toolsets including Kali Linux, Arkime, Metasploit, Cyber Chef, Staghide, Zip2John, and a lot of Googling.
The event was hosted on a multipurpose cyber range called the COBRA DEN (Distributed Exercise Network) which is powered by a company called Rangeforce. They build cyber readiness with hands-on skills development and entirely emulated, realistic virtual environments.
“This is a gamechanger!” proclaimed user: kkuyami, a teacher at Kalaheo High school on the windward side of Oahu,
during the connectivity test.
The event communications were held on “Discord” which allowed for messaging, voice & video chats, and screen sharing. There were channels in the server for announcements, general chat, technical assistance, and solutions walkthrough at the end.
Preliminary Round
In the virtual preliminary round, for 60 hours, these students in their teams (along with a coach/mentor assisting) tried to earn as many points as possible because the top 5 teams (of 5) would move onto the finals, held live at the TechNet Indo Pacific conference at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki. Many of these teams also participate in Cyber Patriot (a national youth cyber education program created in the United States to help direct students toward careers in cybersecurity or another STEM discipline. The program was created by the Air Force Association).
Schools registered:
- Aiea HS
- Hanalani Schools
- Kaiser HS
- Kalaheo HS
- Kapolei HS
- Mckinley HS
- Mid Pacific
- Molokai HS
- Nanakuli High & Intermediate
- Seabury Hall
- Waialua High & Intermediate
- Waimea HS JROTC
- Waipahu HS
- Washington MS
It came close, but the top 5 schools that went onto the final round were:
1. McKinley High School (Oahu-Public)
2. Hanalani School (Oahu-Private)
3. Seabury Hall (Maui-Private)
4. Mid Pacific Institute (Oahu-Private)
5. Nanakuli High School (Oahu-Public)
Final Round
On November 2nd from 7am-2pm, the 25 students and 5 coaches arrived bright eyed, and bushy tailed to the live final round held in the Honolulu Ballroom III at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki. They got the day off from school to come represent and participate at this prestigious event, lunch included.
They each got their own table in the ballroom to work together from and spent the next 7 hours trying to solve new challenges with the same 5 topics from the prelim round, except a bit more difficult. The password cracking was the favorite topic for one of the teams, who jumped up in excitement when they solved a challenge with less than an hour in competition.
Seabury Hall (Spartans) had the lead for most of the day, but when it came down to the last hour is when the leaderboard shifted around a lot. McKinley High School (Tigers) took the lead with 160 points about half an hour before the end. But in the last 5 minutes, Seabury Hall answered a challenge an took back first place at 166 points. Nanakuli also secured 3rd place within the last 24 minutes with 150 points.
The final scores at the end were:
- Seabury Hall Spartans: 166 points
- McKinley Cyber Tigers: 160 points
- Nanakuli Golden Hawks: 150 points
- Mid-Pacific Cyber Owls: 125 points
- Hanalani A-Team: 125 points
At the end of the day, there was an awards ceremony with lots of photos to celebrate their hard work and rigor. All participants received certificates, and the top 3 teams got golden trophies. The 1st place winning team also receiving challenge coins and Rangeforce Platform licenses so they could continue learning through a cyber security module library used by professionals.
It was a great event and amazing to see these young adults with bright futures ahead of them!
