Skip to footer
Passcode
Modern field guide to security and privacy

Watch: The Passcode Cup capture the flag competition

Passcode is hosting our inaugural cybersecurity-based capture-the-flag competition, in Washington, D.C. Watch the first and last hours live here on Friday, October 21 at 12:00 and 4:15 Eastern time.

  • By Staff

What's this all about?

The Passcode Cup is a free, team based capture-the-flag competition with challenges based on reverse-engineering, forensics, web security, cryptography, binary exploitation, and simulated industrial control systems. 

It is organized by Passcode, sponsored by Northrop Grumman and (ISC)², and run with the generous help of Cal Poly Pomona, Uber, and Facebook.

Schedule

We are livestreaming the first and last hours of the competition. Both are hosted by Passcode product manager Sean Sposito and Dan Manson professor of computer information systems, Cal Poly Pomona.

12:00 EDT: Passcode Editor Mike Farrell will interview Phyllis Schneck, the deputy under secretary for cybersecurity and communications for the National Protection and Programs Directorate with the Department of Homeland Security, followed by a ten-minute Q&A. 

There will be a 15-20 minute break, and then starting at 1:00 EDT we will stream updates on the competition and interviews with guests from Northrop Grumman, Uber, and (ISC)² for an hour.

4:15 EDT: The last hour of the livestream begins, and will include a recap of the competition as well as interviews with cybersecurity professionals who are competing with college teams as mentors.

Location and Teams

Passcode CTF will be run in person, on Oct. 21 in Washington, D.C.

The event features teams of four– a mix of college students and cybersecurity professionals to encourage new relationships and mentoring (you may even notice an embedded reporter or two amongst them as well).

The Facebook CTF includes three different levels of challenges: Quizzes, Flags and Bases. Quizzes are questions with an answer that can be one or more words. Flags involve finding an answer (flag) on a remote system. Bases involve a “king of the hill” that require a system to be compromised.

Players from Carnegie Mellon, The University of Virginia, American University, The University of Maryland University College, and around the country will participate.

If you have any questions or would like to participate in a future Passcode CTF, please email passcode@csmonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Watch: The Passcode Cup capture the flag competition
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Security-culture/2016/1019/Watch-The-Passcode-Cup-capture-the-flag-competition
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe