USF CyberHerd racked up another victory at VIVID, a virtual CyberSecurity Competition. The Virtual Internship and Varied Innovative Demonstrations (VIVID) Coalition, comprised of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Augusta University, University of Arizona, and Florida International University, holds an annual competition for students at NSA CAE institutions to strengthen their resumes and showcase their skills in front of U.S. government practitioners.
The four day challenge started with a warm-up round to ensure everything was working, followed by a Trivia Capture the Flag on the second day. On day three they simulated a Red Team assault on a corporate network in hopes to exfiltrate the "overlord key,” and the fourth day was the Blue Team incident response scenario on the same network.
USF Cyberherd took second place this year. "Winning the competition was no easy feat, it took a lot of effort and time since this was a four day competition. We all had to spend time organizing meeting times away from our lives, school, and work. However, it was all worth it in the end!" said Waseem Albaba, Team Captain, First semester masters in cybersecurity, and Offensive Security Engineer at Trace3.
Formed in Fall 2023 by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, with funding from Cyber Florida, CyberHerd offers students specialized coaching and instruction from CSE faculty, recognition of their abilities, and all-expenses-paid travel to compete in national-level cybersecurity competitions. Its purpose is to improve USF's competitiveness in the broad field of cybersecurity, to improve visibility of the university and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and to highlight USF's ongoing investments in cybersecurity education.
Congratulations to the CyberHerd!
- Waseem Albaba, Team Captain, First Semester Masters in CyberSecurity, Offensive Security Engineer at Trace3
- Jacob Hammargren, Co-Captain, SecOps intern at FanDuel, Senior, CyberSecurity
- Cameron Brauner, Senior, Cybersecurity, Offensive Security Analyst at Digital Hands
- Jacob Cain, Senior Cybersecurity Major, System Administrator at Spatiotemporal Innovation Center
- EJ Bulut, Masters in CyberSecurity.
USF Cyberherd is supported by funds from the Computing Partners Program. Learn more about CyberHerd and VIVID.