Codebreaker Challenge 2016 is starting this Friday (9 Sep 2016)! See the
attached flyer. Please get the word out to everyone (faculty and students)
right away and get registered! Does your school have what it takes to "crack
the code"? Last year's challenge went nuclear when over 300 schools jumped in
to compete!
Read the description below:
This Fall, NSA is launching its 4th annual Codebreaker Challenge. It is a
hands-on software reverse engineering challenge where students work to complete
mission-focused objectives to push their school to the top of the competition
leaderboard. The theme for this year's challenge is "countering Improvised
Explosive Devices (IEDs)". Students are given six tasks of increasing
difficulty that culminate in developing the capability to permanently disable
fictional IED software in a fictional scenario. Feedback from previous
challenges indicated students learned a great deal from participating, so with
your help, we encourage as much student participation as possible! Here are
the pertinent details:
-The challenge will be hosted at https://codebreaker.Ltsnet.net.
-The challenge will begin on 9 Sep 2016 at 9 pm ET and ends 31 Dec 2016 at
midnight.
-Students should register on the site using their .edu email addresses
-Small tokens of recognition will be awarded to the first 50 students that
complete the challenge nation-wide. In the past, some universities chose to
offer additional incentives (extra-credit in a relevant course, an award for
the first students to solve the challenge within a department, etc.) We
encourage your department to do this if possible!
-Links to software reverse engineering lectures and other educational material
can be found on the site.
We hope to have several virtual tech talks over the course of the semester
where we will provide an overview of the 2016 challenge, present reverse
engineering techniques, and walk through the solution to the challenge from
last year. We will also answer questions students may have about the
challenge. The dates and times of these tech talks will be made available on
the challenge site.
For support or questions, send email to codebreaker@nsa.gov
