Cyber competition team takes 1st

Cadets on the Air Force Academy’s cyber competition team discuss buffer overflow exploits during a team meeting in the academy’s Cyberwarfare Lab Oct. 3, 2011. The team won a ‘capture the fla
Cadets on the Air Force Academy’s cyber competition team discuss buffer overflow exploits during a team meeting in the academy’s Cyberwarfare Lab Oct. 3, 2011. The team won a ‘capture the flag’ cyber competition sponsored by New York Polytechnic Sept. 28 to 30. Cadet 1st Class Nathan Hart (second from right) is the 2012 cyber competition team captain.

Don Branum

NEW YORK — The Mat-Su Valley was heavily represented on the Air Force Academy’s Cyber Competition Team, which placed first for North American teams and eighth worldwide among teams competing Sept. 28 to 30 in the New York Polytechnic Cyber Security Awareness Week Capture the Flag competition.

The Air Force Academy team — comprised of Cadets 1st Class Nathan Hart (team captain), Frank Adkins, Josh Christman, Luke Jones and Mike Winstead; Cadets 2nd Class Sam Kiekhaefer, Chase King, Keane Lucas, Chad Speer and Ryan Zacher; and Cadets 3rd Class Erick Bonick, Zach Madison, Evan Richter and Clay West — was the only one to solve all 32 challenges in the competition.

Speer and Lucas are 2010 graduates of Colony High School and Adkins graduated from Wasilla High in 2009.

The NYU Poly Capture the Flag competition is a challenge-based competition centered on solving technical security challenges to find flags and submit them for points. The competition consists of challenges in categories from all areas of computer security.

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