Dr. Jeff to join Cyber Quest 2021 as Keynote Speaker

Jeff Daniels will be the CyberQuest keynote speaker for the second year in a row.  The competition date  for 2021 will be Saturday, February 6th.  This year will be a virtual event. 

Starting in 2018, CyberQuest is a cybersecurity competition for high school students to demonstrate and improve their skills.  The teams are outstanding and highly technical.  We usually meet at the Fort Worth Air Force Plant 4 facility and tour the a/c assembly lines.

This year, the challenges may include:

•  Web-based attacks
•  Common vulnerabilities found within websites across the internet
•  Windows & Linux privilege escalation
•  Find vulnerabilities to move from a user to an administrator
•  Packet capture & log analysis
• A network traffic capture or various application / server logs commonly analyzed by cyber incident responders to retrace an adversary’s steps
• Steganography
• The practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video
• Reverse engineering
• The processes of extracting knowledge or design information from anything man-made and reproducing it or reproducing anything based on the extracted information
• Cryptography
• The construction and analysis of techniques that prevent eavesdroppers from reading private messages

What Would Be Good to Know

• Linux & bash (including common CLI tools)
• Common inter-computer communications
• Kali & Metasploit
• Network / Host recon (nmap/ wireshark)
• Intercepting proxies (Burp Suite)
• Scripting (python)

Common web application security vulnerabilities

• OWASP Top 10
• Configuring a browser to use an intercepting proxy such as Burp Suite (and how to use that proxy)
• Port scanning tools such as nmap
• How to use ssh
• Read / write basic bash & html
• Common tools in Kali Linux

A Few Handy Tools

• OllyDbg1.10
• x64dbg (snapshot_2018-07-15_19-25)
• Portable App Platform
• For Windows, these portable apps may be useful
•  7-ZipPortable
• DiffImgPortable
• DiffpdfPortable
• FileAlyzerPortable
• FirefoxPortable
•  FrhedPortable
• GIMPPortable
• gVimPortable
• InkscapePortable
• JPEGViewPortable
• KeepNotePortable
• Notepad++Portable
• PortableApps.com
• winMd5SumPortable

Additional Resources

• Common web vulnerabilities
• Tools included in Kali Linux like webshells
• Bash — Search for “intro to bash programming” and read the first few pages of pretty much any result that you find interesting
• Burp Suite
• Nmap — Search for common scan syntax –know how to scan common ports, perform a service scan
• Common Linux commands — Your favorite search engine will answer all your questions
  awk, cut, sed, wc, less, grep
• Wireshark
  • Search for how to filter on IP address, port, HTTP request method
  • Search for how to follow streams, inspect packet fields
  • Search for how to carve files from Pcap, stream, specific packet

Eligibility Requirements

• Two teams can represent a school. Schools may register up to 3 teams. Third teams will be waitlisted until registration is opened to them on Monday January 18th. From the waitlist, teams will be accepted on a first come, first served basis or other criteria determined by the planning committee. If a third team is accepted, the school will be notified via email on or after January 18th.
• 2 – 5 High School students per team allowed
• One Coach per team. One coach for multiple teams is acceptable.
• Students on the same team must be from the same school. (Exemption for home schools and case by case requests)
• A team should be affiliated with and represent the High School under which they are registering.
• STEM programs are eligible to register a team
  • STEM program is a curriculum based on educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. The program of study focuses on the application of the subjects in a challenging and rigorous manner. Courses and pathways cover preparation for post-secondary education and employment.
  • The STEM Program should be a recognized organization/club within the community and high school(s).
  • STEM programs are eligible to register a team with students from different schools if the students’ school cannot form a team.
• Each team is allowed to bring up to 3 computers per team unless otherwise stated on the site-specific pages
  • Must have a Microsoft RDP client windows: Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection
  • Mac / OS X: Microsoft RDP
  • Linux: rdesktop
  • Must have an ssh client
  • Windows: Putty recommended (there are other options as well, any that support ssh connections will work)
  • Mac / OS X: Terminal (built-in)
  • Linux: Terminal, ensure an ssh client is installed such as openssh-client (typically installed by default)
  • Must have a recently updated (last updated within 1 month prior to the competition day) version of the Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browser on each computer
  • Keyboards / mice permitted if desired
  • No printers
  • No VMs
  • Monitors permitted if desired
  • No thumb drives
  • Reference books are permitted
  • Students will be on Lockheed Martin Guest Wifi, therefore internet access for research via the proxies is permitted
  • Tools / software needed to complete the competition will be provided on the systems within the challenge environment

For a complete list of eligibility requirements see the Official Rules

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