��������

Western Washington University’s cybersecurity team won second place in the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on March, 22.

The two-day competition was held at Highline Community College, and is made up of two 10-hour days in which volunteer attackers from Amazon and Boeing try to hack into a team’s servers. This year students were asked to defend a virtual prison and keep its servers up and running while attackers from the red team tried to break in and obtain passwords and secured files.

Students were purposefully given weaker machines with specific vulnerabilities so that the volunteer hackers could exploit them.

This year’s cybersecurity roster was comprised of Emerson Powers of Yelm; Jack Stratton of Mercer Island; Ky Tran of Bellingham; Kevin Virk of Bellingham; Kyle Barnes of Bellingham; Ian Tucker of Port Angeles; Chase Warren of Bellingham and Charles Lewis of Bellingham.

After two days of defending their servers, students were invited to meet and network with the programmers who had been trying to bring their network for the previous 48 hours.

“At the end of the competition you get to meet up with the attackers and talk to the companies that sponsor the event,” Powers said. “It’s a great opportunity to hand out resumes and get advice.”