News
Student organization to be part of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
October 31, 2024
Hackers Analyzing Threats, or simply HAT, is one of the College of Computing’s student organizations. As we near the end of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we sat down and chatted with Logan Nommensen, president of HAT, to learn more about the club and what they do.
The student organization is a cybersecurity-related club that provides students with resources to enhance, or learn, hacking skills. HAT does this with hands-on activities and speaker events. One of the common activities the club does is called Capture The Flag. The flags in this activity are actually targets, usually something like a text string. They are hidden in websites and programs and students have to hack their way through the programs to find the flags. CTF is a very popular, effective and fun way to enhance hacking abilities. Logan said the benefit of these hands-on activities is very important to the club. “We try to provide extra application of ideas outside of class to support the ideas we are learning in class, and it's also a great way to connect with the peers in your program.”
The organization was recently accepted into the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, or the NCCDC. The NCCDC sees students from across the United States competing to keep a fictional commercial network safe from digital threats. According to the NCCDC website, the networks contain over 50 users, seven to ten networks, and a variety of common internet services. Each college is given the same hardware and software and their task is to protect the network from hacking simulations and maintain the viability of the services.
This is HAT’s first year representing Grand Valley in the competition and they will have a team of four to eight students competing. Logan said, “We will have to protect against ongoing attacks from a team of professional pentesters, so it will be a pretty intense eight hours.” The team will compete in early February in the regional competition with a chance to go to the national event.
HAT is open to students from a variety of programs, hacking backgrounds and majors. Logan said, “The club is open to people from mixed experience levels. We try to be beginner friendly, especially earlier in the year. Few come in knowing much about hacking, and these are the kind of people who can learn the most from doing this kind of stuff.”
The club meets weekly and students can join HAT today by joining their Discord here!
Article written by Maxwell Ritchie.