WSU students place third in national cybersecurity competition qualifiers

A team of ten students from the School of Computing within the College of Engineering competed virtually and won third place in the Midwest qualifiers of the NCAE Cyber Games on Feb. 18.

As part of the competition, the team was tasked with setting up and defending a small network against cyber attacks. Additionally, a “capture the flag” component required solving challenges, such as password cracking, network traffic analysis, reverse engineering and threat hunting.

Team members, all of whom belong to the Wichita State University Linux User Group student organization, included Marcos Vera Bareiro, Carlos Renato Soverina Figueroa, Michael Foster, Jason Kurtz, Philip Lindholm, Ivan Macias, Nikilesh Samba Murthy, Mirza Shahid, Olivia Robl and Khang Tran. From the group, Macias received an award for Most Valuable Player, and Tran received an award for Most Improved Player. The competition was the first NCAE Cyber Games that included WSU student participants.