Deep within the bowels of a Lockheed Martin building in Hanover, Md., a group of trained security experts do their best to penetrate the networks of five military academies. And they don’t mind being mocked.
Which is exactly what the Air Force Academy is doing at the moment. The network administrators have posted a taunting Web page from academy cadets: a photo of a crying baby along with a caption that accuses their attackers of being no more than script kiddies, an insult of no little weight to security professionals.
One of the administrators looks at the picture and laughs. “What they don’t know,” he says, “is that we still have a back door in their system that they haven’t found.”
Welcome to the seventh annual Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX), a National Security Agency event in which computer science students at the nation’s service academies go head-to-head with a hand-picked group of malicious-minded security experts called the Red Team.
At stake was the coveted NSA Information Assurance Director’s Trophy — won last year for the second time by the Air Force Academy — and a lot of pride.
“They are hungry to win,” said Maj. Damon Becknell, who teaches information assurance at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
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Want to know who won?
Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point won for their third time.
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