Mason Competitive Cyber

Cyber savant hacks his way onto international team

Nathan Kahl — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 16:48:51 +0000

Cyber savant hacks his way onto international team Nathan Kahl Tue, 12/03/2024 - 11:48

Dylan Victor Knoff is president of the Mason Competitive Cyber (MCC) club, a computer science major, and the kind of self-motivated hacker you might see rummaging through Goodwill bins, in his free time looking for a $4 router that he can use to bolster his resume.

“I’ll pull it apart and take the firmware off the chip. It's good fun, responsibly and ethically doing stuff to it, of course, and then reporting vulnerabilities,” he said.

The ��AV junior likes to examine routers because they are more likely than other devices to have detectable problems. Once he finds a vulnerability, per industry practice, he reports it to the vendor and then MITRE, the nonprofit that that catalogs firmware and software problems. Getting a mention on their common vulnerabilities and exposures listing looks good professionally for young cyber sleuths.

This ambition to make the cyber world a better, safer place is a theme in Knoff’s life. First, he started a Capture the Flag (CTF) team during high school, and then he attended a university cyber club while still a teen. When the Orlando native and first-gen college student could have chosen the local University of Central Florida, instead he left home for George Mason, recognizing the university’s prowess in the field and the benefit of being close to potential employers in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region. Knowing that breaking into cybersecurity is no Mickey Mouse endeavor, shortly after arriving in Fairfax he networked with the Battelle intern coordinator and subsequently landed a paid, full-time co-op with the STEM giant.

When he's not hacking routers, Knoff enjoys Shenandoah National Park

Knoff is on the U.S. Cyber Team and in October competed at the International Cybersecurity Challenge in Santiago, Chile. He said, “We competed against other countries’ teams in a two-day CTF, where one day was attack-and-defend, and the second day was on vulnerability assessment and exploit development.”

Knoff’s research focus is reverse engineering and vulnerability research. “I'll find something wrong with a specific device or framework and I'll find a ‘zero day,’ which is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor, and then I'll disclose it to them,” he said, indicating the standard industry practice.

For next year’s DistrictCon, a hacker conference in Washington, D.C., in February, Knoff and two members of MCC participated in the Junkyard Contest, where participants find vulnerabilities in devices; they discovered a stunning eight zero days on one router.

Knoff is giving a separate talk at the conference, on return-oriented programming, a way that hackers can get into a system by reusing code that already exists in a program. “I made this tool that utilizes computer emulation to analyze and visualize the memory side effects of elements that make up a return-oriented attack. Using data aggregation, these elements are then sorted based on their exploitation effects and made easily searchable to an operator.” He made the tool open source, available to anyone on GitHub, and is releasing an updated version the day of the talk.

On rare days when he’s not at a keyboard, Knoff enjoys getting outside, especially for a hike. “I love going to Shenandoah with my friends, doing Old Rag and White Oak,” he said, referencing two of the more popular—and challenging—Shenandoah National Park trails.

Currently he’s entertaining offers for two new co-ops, with the hopes of potentially spinning one of those into full-time employment. And whether scaling digital peaks or the rugged trails of Shenandoah, Knoff will find himself climbing…toward discovery and solutions in a safer cyber world.

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Mason Competitive Cyber

computer science

Tech Talent Investment Program (TTIP)

Students

Mason Competitive Cyber scores multiple wins at CyberForge 2024

Martha Bushong — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:50:37 +0000

Mason Competitive Cyber scores multiple wins at CyberForge 2024 Martha Bushong Wed, 02/14/2024 - 12:50

In This Story

Paulo Costa

The ��AV team Mason Competitive Cyber scored first, second, and fourth place at the Cyberforge 2024 competition held on February 11-12. During the two-day conference students heard from industry professionals and enhanced their cyberskills by competing in the Capture the Flag (CTF) competition.

“Winning a Virginia-wide competition is pretty good news by itself,” said Cyber Security Engineering Department Chair Paulo Costa. “CyberForge is especially important due to the quality of the teams, the level of effort every team and associated organizations/universities put into it, and the impact it has in the Virginia cybersecurity space."

Costa consider this one of the two most important competitions in the area. The other is Virginia Military Institute’s Cyber Fusion event happening later this month on February 23-24.

The Cyberforge event featured companies such as MITRE, CCI, G2OPS, HAK5, CompTIA, Virginia Cyber Range, WiCyS, TCM Security, and more. The Mason students competed against top collegiate teams and industry professionals from around Virginia. Students value competitions as these events allow them to meet talented students and industry professionals outside their home institution.

The team won multiple different prizes, including but not limited to Canakit raspberry pi 5 kits, CompTIA vouchers, and HAK5 gift cards, but they are most proud of the winner’s plaque, which they hope to display in the department’s office.

The event was hosted by the Coastal Virginia Cybersecurity Student Association (CVCSA), Coastal Virginia Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (COVA CCI), and a local college/university's cybersecurity club.

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Mason Competitive Cyber heads to national competition for the first time

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 16:41:37 +0000

Mason Competitive Cyber heads to national competition for the first time Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/13/2021 - 12:41

��AV’s competitive cyber club is headed to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) after beating out intense competition in a nationwide wildcard round.

Mason Competitive Cyber is a team of undergraduate students from different majors who spend their free time competing in various cyber competitions. Last year, the team won the CyberFusion State Cup, where they competed against all the universities in Virginia.

This year is the first time the team has advanced to the NCCDC since their first appearance in 2019. “There are two general kinds of competitions: jeopardy and attack-defense. MCC has traditionally excelled in the Jeopardy competitions.  CCDC is an Attack-Defense competition.  In 2019, MasonCC competed in the Mid-Atlantic CCDC for the very first time.  That year we did not make it out of the qualifier round,” says Caleb Yu, vice president for the club.

After their initial loss, some team members weren’t sure if this was the competition for them. But they came back in 2020 and placed higher in their region. The nine regions of the country take the first-place winner from the regional competitions, and this year the team won second place for their region.

“Since we won second, we qualified for a wildcard round.  We competed against the eight other second-place teams from the other regions.  Once again, only the first-place team advances to the national finals,” says Yu.

The MCC team pulled out the win, coming in first, with Stanford University’s team taking second. “Stanford got third place in the national competition last year.  When we noticed that they were also in the wildcard round, we knew that we'd have some fierce competition. It feels awesome to have advanced in place of a team that could have been seen as a heavy favorite,” he says.

The team will compete on April 23 through 25 against the top teams from across the country. “We are expecting some fierce competition from the other schools, but our confidence has never been higher,” says Yu.

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Cybersecurity

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