The Maryland Cyber Challenge, or MDC3, is held in Baltimore each year. The competition, organized by the CyberNEXS division of Leidos, provides a hands-on cybersecurity competition for participants through, among other things, a “king of the hill” style challenge. The event tests not only a team’s ability to break into a target machine, but also its ability to secure that machine from attacks by other competitors. In addition, competitors are given a forensics image of a computer, and tasked with finding hidden flags within the image.
In 2015, about 25 college and university teams qualified for the semi-finals, and eight of those teams made it to the finals. That eight includes two teams from UMBC: Cyberdawgs 1 and Cyberdawgs 2. The final round of competition began on October 28, but technical difficulties prevented the contest from finishing.
The contest resumed at noon on Saturday, February 20, 2016. The Cyberdawgs Team 1, Tyler Campbell, Josh Domangue, Chris Gardner, Anh Ho, Jacob Rust, and Julio Valcarcel took first place with 18,979 points, outscoring the winning team in the professional division by 5690 points. (No other results or point totals were released.)
The Cyber Defense Team’s meetings are open to all students that have a desire to learn hands-on cybersecurity skills, and no prior cyber experience is needed. The club meets during the Spring 2016 semester on Wednesdays at 7:10PM in ITE 231. To request access to their mailing list, send an email to . If you have any questions about the club feel free to email Julio Valcarcel () or Anh Ho (). The Cyber Defense Team’s faculty advisers are Dr. Charles Nicholas () and Dr. Rick Forno ().