CDE 2023

In the spirit of Halloween, we are excited to be building a very spooky Cyber Defense Exercise (CDE). 

08:00: Check-in (Breakfast provided)

09:00: Blue Team System Tests

~9:30: Comp Start

12:00: Lunch (provided)

16:00: Comp End

16:30: Debrief

The renowned Bates family recently purchased a defunct museum and plans to reopen. Highly anticipated opening!! But, they did not at the time of purchase realize the museum was filled with haunted trinkets and treasures. Alas, a mishandling of haunted artifacts has unleashed a host of spectral disturbances. Now, these ghosts and other specters have found a way to meddle with the museum and its digital systems. 

YOU have been recruited as part of an IT team to help manage the technology at the museum. To avoid the PR nightmare, and save your jobs (!!), your team must hurry to finalize preparations for the opening, while dealing with the antics of these spooky meddlers and responding to demands of the CEO of Bates Museum. 

As a reminder: CDE is open only to UMBC undergraduate students. You can be any major, and you can be full-time or part-time, but you must be an undergraduate and you must be currently enrolled at UMBC. 

We are hosting 12 teams of 4 people each. You can create a 4-person team yourself, and sign up together, but you do not have to! 

You can sign up by yourself or with other people, and we will form a maximum of 12 teams, as we are able. It might not be possible to accommodate everyone who signs up, but we will do our best!

A Red Team/Blue Team exercise (aka Red/Blue or Red vs Blue) is a cybersecurity defense training exercise. The exercise is made up of attackers (the Red Team) and defenders (the Blue Team). 

The Red Team is often a group of offensive security specialists, while the Blue Team is made up of incident responders who work to secure their systems and then recognize, assess, and deal with intrusions. 

The exercise is designed to closely mimic real-world conditions of company systems being under cyber attack or insider threat.

CDE will have traditional Red/Blue stuff in addition to a CTF mini-game, phantom phone calls, and several interesting gimmicks.

Come one, come all! Our top priority is ensuring that our Blue Teamers have fun. To that end, we scale our scenario difficulty so that the more experienced teams are not bored and the more inexperienced teams are not overwhelmed

Costumes are encouraged! Several of our CDE organizers and Red Team members will be in costume. In fact, the beings that are haunting the museum take affinity to their own kind, so each Blue Team with at least 1 member "in costume"* will get points toward their overall score

We will feed you! Breakfast and lunch. You are also welcome to bring food/drinks for yourself or eat before you arrive

08:45. You need to be checked in, then seated and setup. And you NEED to be here for the Blue Team System Tests part.

https://forms.gle/ogJ1FNfsDA9NZRnS9 

As always, my door remains open and I welcome hearing from you. If you have questions, comments, concerns or just want to check in, please feel free to send me a message on Discord (@_nuevo).