U.S. is Striking Back in the Global Cyberwar

As a defending team member that has participated in several CTF events, I find these exercises very educational and fun. The complexity of the environment and the injects made it feel “real”, and like a corporate network were defenders are expected to juggle security and deliverables. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to be on the “hacker’s” side of the table at a future event.

I think we need a more open flow of communication between US agencies that defend our country’s data and infrastructure from cyber threats. At the Cyber Dawn event it seemed most of the hackers were closed off and unreceptive to questions. The de facto leader of the hackers seemed the less technical of the bunch, but was willing to answer questions. He talked about how he was “deploying agents” with tools like Core Impact and Canvas but didn’t go into the steps that were taken to hack the machines.

Countries like North Korea and Russia seem to be spending tremendous amounts of money on developing their cyber defense capabilities. I think it’s good that the US is getting on the bandwagon and developing our capabilities on how to defend against these types of attackers. I think more universities should be developing courses that will train the next generate of cyber denfenders.

Ryan Stillwell of MD 9:50PM November 19, 2009