Cyberpatriot
About McKinley Cyberpatriot
The McKinley High School Cyber Defense Team (Cyber patriot) started back in 2011. Since then McKinley is fortunate to have a JROTC team and a School team giving students a greater opportunity to join. Each team is managed by a Coach, and trained by the mentor(s). Mentors are people from the cyber security field, volunteering their time to teach the basics of Cyber security. With the training from Alumni mentor Mark, you will learn the basics from spotting a scam, and removing malware, to digital forensics. Even if you don’t plan to have a career in the technical field every minute of your life in some way you’re affected by Cybersecurity. Cyber patriot uses that knowledge and skill in a incorporates it into an exciting competitive atmosphere by having schools compete with other school all over the United States and US territories.
Mentors
Here at McKinley High School we are fortunately enough to have an excellent mentor who is an Alumni of McKinley. Mentors are technical advisors who educate and train students in preparation for the Cyber patriot Competition.
Due to the ever expanding cyber world each mentor has a focus on sub categories of competition materials based on their subject matter.
Awards/Recognition:
School Year 21-22: CyberPatriot State Award: 2nd Place Open Team Platinum Tier, 1st Place AFCEA Indo-Pacific Technet Cyber Capture-The-Flag (CTF) event.
School Year 22-23: CyberPatriot State Award: 1st Place Open Team Platinum Tier, 2nd Place AFCEA Indo-Pacific Technet Cyber Capture-The-Flag (CTF) event, 2nd Place UH Manoa East-West Center CTF Cyber Event, and 2nd Place ISC(2) CTF Invitational.
Current Mentors:
Mark Munar
Cryptography, Forensics, Linux Distro, Windows Servers, and Mac
Former Mentors. Mahalo for your support!
Allen Liang
Android, Chrome, Google Services
Cryptography, Forensics, Security
Eric Moriyasu
Windows, Java Programming, Auditing, Configurations
What is Cyber Patriot?
Cyber-patriot is the premier National High School Cyber Defense competition that is designed to give hands on exposure to the foundations of cyber security. Cyber-patriot is not a hacking competition. Cyber-patriot's goal is to excite students about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. The name in general "Cyber" meaning computers, and "Patriot" meaning defender. This team is dedicated on Educating people on how to protect computers from online attacks, virus, and hackers. Click here to go to the official Cyberpatriot website.
Requirements:
Team Requirements
Must be a current McKinley High School student
Passing all classes (1.000 GPA Min)
Available to meet once a week After school
Computer experience Level:
None required, just the willingness to learn.
*There are two divisions; if your a McKinley JROTC cadet, you will be in the All Service Division. If you are not in JROTC, you'll be in the Open Division.
THIS IS NOT A RECRUITING PROGRAM, ALTHOUGH IT IS RUN BY THE AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION, THERE ARE ALLOT OF OTHER COMPANIES SPONSORING THIS PROGRAM!
Why should you join?
It's a known fact, everyone uses the internet! Whether it's updating your Facebook status, or checking your email. You might think that just because you're not a CEO of some big company and just the average student you'll never have to worry about online threats, well you're wrong. Anyone can and is affected online, from cyber-attacks to scams, it’s everywhere and the threat is there! Every day in the news someone is either getting scammed, companies getting hacked and data breached, or DOS Attacked and the security of the system gets compromised. This can happen to anyone, all it takes is an unsecured device and someone wanting to get access to it. At times like these even your antivirus program won't save you, part of the solution is knowing a threat when you see one, the other part is to not even have it in the first place. It’s not rocket science it’s a questions you have to ask yourself “Do you want the internet to be a safe and secure place for you, or dangerous place for you to fear that someone’s going to steal your identity?"
The Competition
The early rounds of the competition are done on-line during weekends via the Internet from teams’ schools or other sponsoring organization’s facilities.
Prior to the round, teams download “virtual image” representations of operating systems with known flaws, or cyber security “vulnerabilities.” The team’s assignment is to find the flaws while keeping specified computer functions (“services,” such as email) working. Team progress is recorded by a central CyberPatriot scoring system.
At the end of the third round, twelve teams consisting of 5 primary, 1 alternate, and 2 Chaperons members from each division will be invited to attend an in-person CyberPatriot National Finals Competition in the Washington, DC area for which all team travel expenses are paid by CyberPatriot. There, teams will compete face to face and will defend virtual networks from a professional aggressor team. The teams are given a business scenario; they will be newly hired IT professionals who will be managing the network of a small company. There will be 8 to 12 virtual machines on this network that need to be managed. Teams get their score by reducing the known vulnerabilities of the network, maintaining critical services (email, web server, etc.) and by defending the network from attack.
The Teams
A CyberPatriot team consists of five students and up to five alternates. Each team must have a coach, normally a teacher or JROTC, CAP, or Sea Cadet Leader.
The coach does not have to have any technical expertise, and generally serves as an administrator for the team.
Competitors must be at least 13 years old and enrolled in grades 9-12.
Teams will have mentors (technical advisors) to help students prepare for the competition. CyberPatriot works with coaches to find mentors for their team.
How do I get involved?
Check out our How do you fit? page to see how to get involved with CyberPatriot.
Education Materials
CyberPatriot provides a comprehensive compilation of teaching material. Feel free to examine the material here.
History
The first CyberPatriot “games” took place in 2009, at AFA’s 25th Annual Air Warfare Symposium where seven Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFJROTC) teams and one Civil Air Patrol (CAP) team from the greater Orlando area competed. As a prototype event, no one quite knew how well it would be received. But the enthusiastic responses from the competitors and the positive feedback from the surrounding industry professionals and senior military leaders demonstrated that it was an unqualified success.
For the 2009-10 school year, the competition, though still restricted to Air Force JROTC units and CAP squadrons, went nationwide, conducting three online qualification rounds for nearly 200 teams in 44 states, South Korea, and Japan.
The support from the competition’s industry-leading sponsors helps reaffirm the importance and relevance of cyber security. A generous grant from the program’s presenting sponsor, Northrop Grumman, made full national deployment possible. SAIC supplies their patent-pending software as the platform for the competition. The CIAS at the University of Texas in San Antonio (creator of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition) provides rich instructional materials for the competition. All of these sponsors ensured that CyberPatriot became a reality for high school students nationwide.