The UConn campus was filled with a bunch of "hacks" on Monday, that was by design. This week, the school is hosting computer tech teams from all over the country and simulating various cyber threat scenarios. Billed as “CyberSEED week", 43 college teams with up to 4 participants each have been charged with playing computer criminals. "The purpose of this is to gain more cyber security knowledge," said Mike Garvin, a Senior Manager at Symantec, who is one of the event sponsors. Garvin added, "this is an opportunity to actually get into the systems and conduct attacks like our hackers normally would."
With a keyboard as his primary weapon, Syracuse University senior Anthony Herbert and his team were busy trying to infiltrate a simulated cyber attack on an oil field, "in order to be successful at defending you also have to know how to be on the offensive," Herbert said. Farrukh Hijaz, a grad student on the UConn team said, "we have to think fast and we have to think different."
The CyberSEED Conference is in its first year and, aside from the various competitions, the two day event offers computer security symposiums. Kevin Casey, a Northeast Division President from Comcast, an event sponsor, said, "it brings together the best minds to develop new techniques to serve information across networks."