Rider students place second in coastwide cybersecurity competition

By Samantha Clark

Five Rider seniors finished in second place among 11 teams across the eastern United States in the Oct. 9 Capture the Flag cybersecurity competition hosted by the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Eastern.

The team consisted of computer science majors Druhv Sethi and Nakul Mittal, cybersecurity majors Ritvik Sajeev and Tanmay Agarwal and computer science and cybersecurity double major Phan An Nguyen, who fell just a few seconds behind the first-place champions after three hours of solving challenges.

The CTF competition was held at Bowie State University in Prince George’s County, Maryland and invited teams to find hidden text strings, or “flags,” in vulnerable online programs and systems.

“A capture the flag challenge is a series of different challenges that’s tested in a virtual environment, so you have different topics like cryptography, algorithms, reverse engineering and other genres of cybersecurity,” Sethi said. “You have nine points for each category, so the more questions you complete, the more points you get. … At the end of the three hours, whichever team accumulates the most points, wins.”

With this being the first time Rider students were involved in the competition, the team went into the process blind, but their preparation is what ultimately led them to their great success.

To do so, the team researched the five major topics for the competition and had two students become well versed in each.

“If one person, you know, is struggling with the challenge, you could pass it on to the other person, so we could work together better as the team,” Agarwal said.

In addition to their lengthy preparation, the team members already knew each other before their work at the competition, allowing them to build on the preestablished sense of camaraderie.

Assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics Jay Luo, who aided the team throughout the competition, is a committee member of the conference, placing him close to the organization.

In his role, Luo organizes meetings, proposes ideas and oversees the conference’s programming, so having his students pull off this notable feat was a true accomplishment for the department as a whole.

“We are so excited about this achievement. When the students first talked to me, I did not expect that they would get any kind of the rewards at the beginning, to be honest,” Luo said. “It’s really a surprise for me, and I’m so proud of them.”