IST students win hacking competition at ShmooCon
ShmooCon, an annual East Coast hacker convention, brings together some of the most astute minds in the information security field. At this year’s convention, which was held recently in Washington, D.C., members of the Information Assurance (IA) Club at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) made their mark for the second year in a row by triumphing in Hack Fortress, a video game/hacking competition. In addition to bragging rights, the team was awarded the Golden Wrench—a monkey wrench painted gold.
According to its website, ShmooCon is “hell-bent on offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues.” The convention, which is held at the Washington Hilton Hotel, is sponsored by The Shmoo Group, a nonprofit think-tank of individuals who are interested in information security research and development. Events at ShmooCon include talks and seminars by information security professionals on “new and innovative security solutions and how hackers will try to exploit the current security situation,” said Adam Stavely, a member of the IA Club and a sophomore majoring in IST and minoring in Security Risk and Analysis.
“It brings together people in the fields of cyber security and information security to talk about the new wave of hackers and how we’re trying to prevent it,” said Stavely, who didn’t attend the convention.
Hoss Hewitt, corporate liaison for the IA Club and a junior SRA major who attended ShmooCon, said that as the winner of last year’s Hack Fortress competition, the team had 10 tickets guaranteed for this year’s convention. Nearly a dozen club members made the trip, he said, in addition to a number of alumni, for a total of about 30 attendees connected to Penn State.
The IA Club, according to the group’s website, is a “hands-on, student-driven organization designed to supplement and extend the information security concepts discussed in the IST curriculum.” Through talks, demonstrations, seminars and special guests, the club seeks to help students understand the current climate and future opportunities in the information assurance field.
Hack Fortress, according to ShmooCon’s website, combines elements of two previous ShmooCon events, "Hack or Halo" and the "Team Fortress 2 LAN party." Hack Fortress pits teams of players against one another in a dual-challenge event over the course of a day. Each team is divided into two groups that work on separate challenges occurring at the same time. One portion of a team competes in the video game, while the second group attempts to crack passwords and decrypt secret messages. Each hacking solution is worth a certain amount of points, Stavely said, and the team that accumulates the most points within a half-hour is declared the winner. The contest also allows its competitors to indulge their extroverted sides, Hewitt said. One of his challenges was to give a team member a piggy-back ride, while his partner screamed out lines from a movie.
Since hackers, generally speaking, don’t have a noble reputation, one might question the merits of a hacking convention. However, Hewitt said, by acquiring those skills, a computer user is equipped with the knowledge to counter malicious hackers.
“If you know how to hack something, then you can better defend yourself,” he said.
As repeat victors of Hack Fortress, Hewitt said, the IA Club members were once again guaranteed a set of tickets to the next ShmooCon.
“We’re going back, and hopefully, we can defend our title,” he said.
