Check out our challenges section to see what some of the activities look like. You need to solve whatever request is being made, and you will receive a key when you have completed the activity successfully. You submit the key, and you will gain points that will put you onto the scoreboard.
To get started, pick a challenge that has a low point value. These challenges are more manageable than the ones worth more points. It’s best to connect with other students at the college in the DMZ area. There are also some good helpful resources on my YouTube channel below.
If these types of activities are something that you enjoy doing and want more, then there are other resources like "Hack The Box," "Hack This Site," and many other alternatives. I strongly recommend checking out some of these other websites to gain a deeper understanding of the cyber security space.
Each semester there are opportunities for students to participate in live limited-time competitions. Many students enjoy doing the National Cyber League (NCL) competition. This competition has different areas like a gymnasium that teaches you how to do things, an individual challenge, and a team challenge. NCL is a great way to learn new skills and connect with other students.
The "Street League" is open to anyone. These challenges are non-invasive, and you can use your home computer. You will not be doing any attacking or scanning of any remote machines. These challenges are like reading log files or decoding a cipher. If there is any brute force attack, it is on a downloaded file, not executed over the Internet. These challenges will not create any issues with your Internet service provider.
The "Prem Team" are students that do challenges that live inside an isolated network in the "Cyber Security Command Center (The DMZ)." In the networking world, a DMZ is an area of the network segregated to reduce any security threats, and this is how the room got its nickname "The DMZ." These types of challenges require a remote machine that will become the target in the challenge. It may be a web server, DNS server, or some device that will need to get compromised to gain points.
Each year "The DMZ" puts on a Capture the Flag style event. Students pre-qualify and get placed on teams. Two teams will be given identical servers and need to find and exploit vulnerabilities on the opposing team's machine to gain points. If they can shut down the vulnerability and prevent the exploitation, they block the other team from gaining points.
All the events are organized through the student-run AITP group. The best way to get information about upcoming events is to attend the AITP meetings and join the MS Team Channel. Students meet every Wednesday from 4:15 PM to 5:15 PM in room C160B on the Appleton campus. There’s no need to register you just need to show up.
