March 25th: Scenario-Based Cyber Attack Training

Post-Event Summary Report

International Cyber Security Aggregator: Scenario-Based Training Exercise

The Event

On March 25th, Bay Atlantic University and Cyber Security Center at Bahçeşehir University in Turkey organized a challenging Two-Day Online Cyber Security event, “International Cyber Security Aggregator: Scenario-Based Training Exercise.” The event focused on providing BAU’s students and Bahçeşehir University’s students an opportunity to participate in a cybersecurity hands-on and technological competition. The event was open to all students in technology-related degrees, including students from Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees’ programs. During the two-day event, between March 25th, at 10 AM, and March 27th, at 10 AM, the registered participants from the two universities received credentials to access the scenarios on the provided web application hosted in Turkey.

The opening ceremony was held on a videoconference system, Zoom, which was broadcasted via Bahçeşehir University’s YouTube Channel. BAU’s president, Sinem Vatanartiran, Ph.D., attended this live event as the event’s opening speaker. Dr. Vatanartiran provided her speech to address how critical Cyber Security has become in the digital world and how significant this event would be to the participants. The students who were on this training exercise would gain tremendous experience in this real-world’s digital misuse of the technology.

During the two-day event, the participants worked on six scenarios in an accumulative manner as self-paced activity. Each defined cyber-scenario contained hidden messages that the participant needed to find and would lead them to the gateway of the next scenario. Each scenario was score-bases depending on its difficulty. The participants were allowed to work as a group but needed to provide their answers in their assigned digital environment to receive the points.

Participants

BAU’s eight students competed in the event, including five Bachelor’s Degree students and three Master’s Degree students. After the opening ceremony, all participants received a link to sign in to the competition dashboard to access the scenarios. The administrators from the Cyber Security Center provided a group chat on a messaging application to assist the participants regarding technical difficulty and clarification. The participants began from the first problem and worked their way in sequence from the first to the sixth scenario. The set of questions consisted of issues occurring at the user, network, and application level.

Figure 1: Screenshot of a scenario’s activity from a participant

Figure 2: Screenshot of a scenario’s description from a participant

The complexity of the questions was from low to medium, considering that students from all technology-related majors would be able to research and resolve these problems. The participants received low to high points according to the sequence of the scenarios when they solved the issues.

BAU’s students’ performance

BAU is pleased to announce that two BAU’s Bachelor of Science students solved all questions, Mr. Cristobal Montiel, majoring in Data Science, and Mr. Dias Nurgaliyev, majoring in Information Technology. The two students worked intensively on the scenarios during the two-day event and received the maximum score of 1250 points to end the event with the first-place finish.

This event undoubtedly provided an excellent opportunity for students in the BS and MS Degrees to participate in a real-world cybersecurity scenario and gain tremendous experience, identifying the issues and attempting to find solutions. Although not all participants could resolve all problems and proceed to all questions, working on the activities would allow them to gain a considerable awareness of potentially malicious actions.

Mr. Montiel, “one of the two winners of the cybersecurity competition,” shared his thought on the event, “I’m Cristobal Montiel. I was blessed to be in an event that helped me learn so many things which the main thing I learned was hacking. This event showed me so many programs the hackers use to find information and get into a system. At first, I did not know how to do things because I’m very new to cybersecurity and programming. However, I was blessed to get help and get to know what is going on. After I got a little help, I was able to keep going and not giving up. I ended up having so much fun looking for each flag in each task. When I found out I got first place, I was so proud of myself and every person who helped me to get through this. It was a very fun experience. I have to give my gratitude to my academic advisor and professor Pipop for showing me this event and being able to participate. I am looking forward for the next events in BAU and have lots of fun with everyone participating.”

Mr. Nurgaliyev, the other winner, also shared his thought about the event., “My name is Dias Nurgaliyev. I entered this competition to challenge myself with something new to me. When the competition began it felt a bit difficult, but when I kept on going, I understood the main goal and achieved my results much faster. Also, what kept me going is that there were other competitors and I felt that I needed to overcome them, so it helped me from not doing other parts. This online competition gave me a lot of new knowledge and motivation to study more and harder. This experience was one of the best decisions I made, because it gave more knowledge and was entertaining to compete with others. I am very thankful for the organizers for this awesome experience. “

Conclusion

Overall, the establishment of the event aims at providing experience to students to recognize dangers that may cause individuals and organizations a severe problem if they are not aware of malicious activities in the digital world. Undoubtedly, Information Technology, Data Science, Big Data Analytics, and Cyber Security all have a critical role in keeping the digital data and resources secure by ensuring the effectiveness of the three most essential principles in Cyber Security, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. At BAU, we establish our BS and MS Degrees curriculum to ensure that our students learn theoretical and practical aspects and apply them effectively to the three principles. The goal and mission of BAU are to produce knowledgeable and qualified individuals for the rising global demands of experts in the technology industry and Cyber Security.