On July 19 through 20 UTSA’s Cyber Security Association (CSA) competed in Cyber Challenge 2011, a national cyber security competition, where they tied for second place.
The MITRE-sponsored event was a chance for interested organizations and individuals to qualify for a chance to compete at DEFCON, one of the world’s largest annual hacker conventions, in the Open Capture The Flag (CTF) competition as well as get hands-on experience in high-level hacking.
The CTF style competition requires teams “to find a ‘flag,’ a special hidden sentence that can only be found by correctly solving the challenge,” said Dane Stuckey, a senior double majoring in information assurance and information security and the vice president of CSA.
Brock Haun, a sophomore majoring in computer science, said that the team was “fairly excited” about the chance to compete for a spot in DEFCON, but said that “the team wasn’t terribly upset when they found out they missed out on