Competiting against 149 teams from across the nation, two University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu teams placed 3rd and 11th overall in the first spring season of the National Cyber League. The 2017 National Cyber League Spring Season includes select challenges and hands-on lab exercises that develop and test players knowledge and skills. The spring competition ran from April 28 through April 30.
Coached by Matthew Chapman, UH West span aria-label=”Oahu”>Oʻahu associate professor of information technology and cyber security, the student teams competed in challenges that included cryptography, open source intelligence, log analysis, network traffic analysis, exploitation of networks, wireless access exploitation, network scanning, password cracking and web application exploitation.
“Competing in a national level competition, while simultaneously managing end of semester work, papers and finals, is a testament to both our students technical skills and professionalism,” said Chapman. “We had so many cybersecurity students eager to compete, that this spring season, we created a second team. The fact that both teams finished so high in national rankings showcases the exceptional talent Hawaiʻi has to offer in cybersecruity.”
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“We couldn’t have done this without a strong background in technical problem solving,” Gunderson said. “Every member of our team worked until their eyes hurt or worse.”
Tanaka added, “We worked together as a team really well, we tackled every challenge from multiple angles. There was never a time where someone worked alone, and we all had a go-to person to tackle every challenge.”
UH West Oʻahu’s Pueo Team placed 11th nationally. Co-captains Ken Dedicatoria and Kim Matsumoto led the team including Steve Lorenz, Louis Giardina, Sharey Vendiola, Ana Taualupe, Evan Monma, Brayton Acoba, Melissa DeLeon and Justin Cobbs.
—By Leila Wai Shimokawa
