NJIT ACM Chapter Hosts JerseyCTF Cybersecurity Competition

NJIT's student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery hosted its first cybersecurity competition last month, with one of its own members on the winning team among more than 600 participants from 26 countries.

The event, called JerseyCTF, was a capture-the-flag event where entrants test their skills to defend their own servers and attack their rivals. NJIT ACM positioned JerseyCTF for beginners and posted Jeopardy-style questions to teams of 1 to 4 people, in categories including cryptography, forensics, reverse engineering and web exploitation.

NJIT student Tensei Ikeda, a junior computer science major from Clifton, was on the winning student team with Roy Basmacier from Turkey's Sabanci University. "It was very engaging to be a part of JerseyCTF. It really scratched the competitive itch for me and my friend," he said. Looking at the scoreboard and seeing how my team was falling behind to other student teams after the first day motivated [us] to reduce our sleep schedules in order to push our score in the final hours of the event."

An example of the type of challenge that JerseyCTF asked participants to solve involved network traffic analysis. Participants were tasked with finding the flag hidden in the stream of a packet capture file. They did this using the popular network analysis software Wireshark. When a participant found the flag, they could submit it for points.

NJIT ACM officials said their post-event survey yielded positive responses, so they're inclined to host JerseyCTF every year from now on. 

“NJIT is a hidden security gem in the New York metropolitan area. NJIT has a Cybersecurity Research Center on campus, a master’s and graduate certificate program, and undergraduate courses on the subject. Our intent was to expand upon these opportunities with an annual event that attracts an even greater global security presence to NJIT,” said Logan Reyes, one of the event organizers and ACM chapter Secretary. 

With assistance from organizations like CyberSecurity Non-Profit (CSNP) and the NJ Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell (NJCCIC), a team of volunteers were able to develop technical captivating challenges and set up the necessary infrastructure to virtually host the event. NJIT received marketing assistance from CyberSecurity Non-Profit, which helped land expert guest speakers, CSNP’s marketing team was also able to lend a hand identifying expert speakers for a series of tech talks scheduled across the two-day event and from NJJ Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell, where director Michael Geraghty served as the event's keynote speaker. Geraghty is also Chief Information Security Officer for the State of New Jersey.

"The NJCCIC is excited to partner with NJIT in our efforts to build a capable cybersecurity workforce," said Geraghty. "The JerseyCTF competition provides participants with an opportunity to experience just what a cyber career entails, working individually and within a team to innovatively solve problems on the fly while under defined time constraints. While winning the competition is a great achievement, just as importantly, JerseyCTF provides all participants with the opportunity to practice and improve their cyber skills in a near real-world cyber environment. We look forward to working with NJIT to make next year’s JerseyCTF even better."

“We had a support team available around the clock for the full 24 hours the event ran, so we each took shifts,” added NJIT ACM's Sreya Das. “It was a rewarding experience to be awake at 2:00 AM in New Jersey and get contacted by someone in India or Singapore, guide them through solving a challenge, ask how they liked the event, and learn a little about them and their experiences. Knowing that people across the world were enthusiastic enough about our event to spend hours working on the challenges was touching.”

The students organizers are quick to point out that the event could not have succeeded without the exceptional level of support, guidance, and encouragement they received from sponsors, speakers, volunteers and Ying Wu College of Computing staff.

“What I liked about JerseyCTF is that, even though our hackathons are excellent, they tend to only focus on the software development aspect of computer science and doing the right thing. CTFs focus on what happens when your creativity runs wild or when someone decides to take a walk on the dark side,” ACM volunteer Andres Orbe said.

Orbe envisions JerseyCTF evolving from an introductory level event to one that is recognized by Major League Cyber, a CTF statistics-tracking organization that provides established events with scheduling, team tracking and single sign-on support. With a rich repository of challenges and a stronger infrastructure, Orbe believes that, with time, JerseyCTF can get to that level and benefit from the credits and cybersecurity opportunities that level would bring to NJIT. For now, the team is focused on next year’s event and ways they can improve upon this year’s successful competition.

Sponsors included Contrast Security, DigitalOcean,KnowBe4, NJCCIC, SecurityInnovation and SpecterOps. Speakers included Gabrielle Botbol, Jon Helmus, Joanna Huisman, John Jackson, Seth Kirschner, Ilan Ponimansky, William Price, Joseph Russo and Hope Walker.