Tag Archives: National Cyber League

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Final Game: The Team Game

Objective: 

Students will form a team and use their collective knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Team Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Team Game

Assignment:

The Final Game: Team Game Play

Real-world cybersecurity work is often done in teams. The NCL Team Game provides a safe and challenging environment for players from the Individual Game to apply their knowledge and skills in a team setting.

The Team Game is where you compete with the other members of your team against all the other teams in NCL, even other teams from your school. Performance in the Team Game is used to calculate your school’s Cyber Power Ranking. You may receive assistance from members of your team but may not receive assistance from anyone else. No flag-sharing with other teams allowed. Each team may have up to 7 Student Players and do not need to be from the same school. Team Game roster sign up must be completed prior to the Team Game setup deadline.

The team game requires players to work together to solve real problems, with real deadlines, under time (and in some cases) technical and resource constraints.

All registered student players are eligible to play in the Team Game; Preseason participation is not required.

You will need to arrange and setup your own teams. As a coach, I have no involvement or ability to set up or configure teams. You can set up your team roster here. Setup must be completed by April 22nd at 9:59 AM Local Time or you will not be able to participate.

  1. Students who are creating a team can do so here: https://cyberskyline.com/events/ncl/register/team.
    After they create the team, they will be given a link to give to players (up to 7) they want on their team.
  2. Students who are joining a team will need to obtain the team joining link from the person who created the team. Once they visit the link and confirm, they will be part of the team. 
  3. Students may form teams of up to 7 players. While students may form their own team and play the game solo, this is highly discouraged, as it will limit your ability to earn points, and will likely result in a poor grade for this final assessment project. Please complete your team setup by April 25th at 8:59 p.m. local time.
  4. The Team Game is a mandatory weekend game. The Team Game starts at 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday, April 22nd and ends at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, April 24th.
  5. As in the Individual Game, you are urged to continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, and you may use the tools in the Kali Linux workstation provided at https://uscyberrange.org to solve the challenges.
  6. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best results, especially if you did not participate in the Individual Game. This will be your last opportunity to receive points for participation in the NCL Competition.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as this Team Game will represent the final Assessment grade before the Final Exam for this final term.

Assigned: April 11th, 2022
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 22nd, 2022

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League: The Individual Game

Objective: 

Students will use their accumulated knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Individual Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Individual Game

Assignment:

The Second Game: The Individual Game
The Individual Game is a mandatory weekend game. You must participate in the Individual Game in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Individual Game gameplay starts at 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday, April 8th and ends at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, April 10th.

  1. Please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges.
  2. You have full access to the resources at the US Cyber Range to assist you with the challenges in the NCL competition.
  3. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best result in your final Scouting Report. It is confirmed that 25% completion is the minimum where scholarships and other recognition may be awarded, but it is in your best interest to score as high as possible in the allotted time.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as the Individual Game will represent a significant portion of your grade for this final term.

Security + Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, continue your independent study, working towards the Security + Exam. I will be making arrangements next week for our field trip at the end of the month to take the exam, so study hard. It’s closer than you think!

Assigned: April 7th, 2022
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 10th, 2022

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League – Spring 2022 Practice Game

Objective: 

Students will use their accumulated knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Practice Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Preseason

Assignment:

The First Game: Preseason Play
The Practice Game is a week-long pre-season game. You must participate in the Practice Game in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Practice Game starts at 1:00 p.m. ET on Monday, March 28th and ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on Monday, April 4th.

There are lots of preparatory materials available. Also, be sure to read about the Bracketing system, which the Preseason game determines, as well as the Rules of Conduct.

  1. If you complete the Preseason game, continue your training in the Gym to prepare for the Regular Season competition on Friday, April 8th.
  2. If you do not finish the competition during class time, please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best result in your final Scouting Report.

The Big Game: Regular Season Individual Game
The Individual Game is a three-day mandatory game. You must participate in the Individual Game in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Individual Game starts at 10:00 am MST on Friday, April 8th and ends at 6:00 p.m. MST on Sunday, April 10th.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as the Preseason and Individual Game will form the bulk of your grade for this final term.

Security+ Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, please continue working on your Independent Study in preparation for the Security+ test. Our goal is to complete the test at the end of April, so time is of the essence!

Assigned: March 28th, 2022
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 4th, 2022

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Cryptography Links – Spring 2022

Objective: 

Students will continue preparing for competition in the National Cyber League by familiarizing themselves with common cryptographic methods so that they can effectively identify and decrypt encrypted messages and data.

Topics Discussed:

  • Cryptography
  • Ciphertext
  • Plaintext

Links:

This list is maintained as a resource for students competing in the National Cyber League competition to assist in identification and solution of the presented Cryptography puzzles. If you find any good online Cryptography resources in your travels, let me know and I will add them to the list!

Cryptii – A very cool and very fast “modular” decryption tool that lets you run a string of text through several encryption/decryption methods of your choice.

Dcode.fr – An outstanding French website that offers automatic decoding for a large variety of encryptions. Features include a powerful cipher identifier (that automatically recognizes more than 200 ciphers), decoding tools for the Caesar cipher, Vigenere cipher, Polybius’ square, and dozens of other encryptions.

The Black Chamber – A great collection of interactive tools that explain and allow you to decrypt a variety of common (and some uncommon) encoding schemes.

Tools for Noobs: Online Decryption Tool – Decrypts a string using various algorithms (e.g. Blowfish, DES, TripleDES, Enigma).

MD5hashing.net Encryption and Decryption – At md5hashing.net you can hash (encrypt) any string into 66 different hash types. As you probably know – decryption of any hash is impossible, but they offer reverse decryption via our database (~1000M records, and counting).

Splitbrain.org Encoding/Decoding Tools – This tool helps you to quickly run some text through various different encoding/decoding functions available in PHP. Great for a lot of different decoding possibilities rapidly

CodeBeautify.org Encryption/Decryption Tool – A nice, clean tool for decrypting codes that you know the key for, or encrypting codes with your own original key.

SQLite Viewer for Chrome – Chrome plugin for viewing SQLite databases in your browser. Allows opening and editing of SQLite databases without requiring admin access to install.

Posted: February 17th, 2022

Networking and Operating Systems

Welcome to the National Cyber League! – Week 1: Gym Training

Objective: 

Students will begin preparing for competition in the National Cyber League by familiarizing themselves with the competition rules and procedures through training in the NCL Gym.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Preseason
  • Regular Season
  • Postseason

Assignment:

  1. The NCL Gym is now open! The NCL Gym provides practice challenges to help prepare players for Preseason, Regular Season and Postseason. We will begin practicing in the NCL Gym when our accounts become available.
  2. While practicing in the NCL Gym, access the solutions guide to receive step-by-step instructions to help you understand the more difficult challenges.
  3. Log into the Gym
  4. Read the FAQ – you need to know the NCL lingo
  5. Mark your calendars with the following important NCL Preseason and Regular season dates:
    1. 1/31 – 5/27: Gym Training
    2. 3/28 – 4/4: Preseason Practice Game
    3. 4/8 – 4/10: Regular Season Individual Game
    4. 4/22 – 4/24: Postseason Team Game

The First Game: Preseason Practice Play
The Preseason Practice is a week-long game that measures individual performance and prepares students for the Regular Season game. Participation in the Preseason is recommended to help new players prepare and returning players refresh for the Individual and Team Games. The Preseason Practice gameplay starts at 10:00 a.m. MST on Monday, March 28th and ends at 6:00 p.m. MST on Monday, April 4th.

There are lots of preparatory materials available. Also, be sure to check out the Player Resources, as well as the Rules of Conduct.

Assigned: Feb 8th, 2022
Teacher Pacing Due Date: March 25th, 2022

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League – Back to the Gym

Objective: 

Students will continue to train in the NCL Gym to enhance their understanding of Cybersecurity principles and to assist in preparing for next year’s competition.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Team Game
  • NCL Gym Training

Assignment:

  1. This week, we will continue our training in the Gym to learn more about cybersecurity tools and techniques, and to prepare returning Net/Op students for competition in the NCL 2019 Spring Season.
  2. It is expected that everyone will complete as many of the Gym exercises as they can by May 16th. This will allow for us to prepare for the end-of-course final exam over the week of May 13th. The current high score in the gym has been capped at 5000 points, so your final assignment grade will be graded on a curve down from this point total. In essence, you will receive a grade based on how close your score is to 5000, so you should continue working in the Gym for the next two weeks, regardless of how much (or how little) you have already completed.
  3. The final exam will be held on May 17th during the regular class period. It is a 100 question multiple choice quiz covering all six of the chapters studied during the first half of the course, plus some of the cybersecurity tools we worked with in the second half of the course. We will review this material the week of the 13th.

Support Team:

For those who are not participating in the NCL, the daily challenge has been posted on my Google Classroom page. This week’s challenges are difficult Steganography challenges, so make sure you have downloaded the Digital Invisible Ink Toolkit, and visit the page to complete the daily challenge and receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: May 6th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: May 8th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Final Game: The Team Game

Objective: 

Students will form a team and use their collective knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Team Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Team Game

Assignment:

The Final Game: Team Game Play

Real-world cybersecurity work is often done in teams. The NCL Team Game provides a safe and challenging environment for players from the Individual Game to apply their knowledge and skills in a team setting. The team game requires players to work together to solve real problems, with real deadlines, under time (and in some cases) technical and resource constraints. No flag-sharing with other teams allowed.

All registered student players are eligible to play in the Team Game; Preseason participation is not required. If all members of the team did not participate in the Individual Game, then your team will be placed into the Pewter Bracket for the Team Game.

You will need to arrange and setup your own teams. As a coach, I have no involvement or ability to set up or configure teams. Setup must be completed by April 25 at 8:59 PM Local Time or you will not be able to participate.

1. Students who are creating a team can do so here: https://cyberskyline.com/events/ncl/register/team. After they create the team, they will be given a link to give to players (up to 7) they want on their team.

2. Students who are joining a team will need to obtain the team joining link from the person who created the team. Once they visit the link and confirm, they will be part of the team. 

3. Students may form teams of up to 7 players. While students may form their own team and play the game solo, this is highly discouraged, as it will limit your ability to earn points, and will likely result in a poor grade for this final assessment project. Please complete your team setup by April 25th at 8:59 p.m. local time.

The Team Game is a mandatory weekend game. The Team Game starts at 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday, April 26th and ends at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, April 28th.

  1. If you do not finish the competition during class time, please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges.
  2. I will be on campus from 10:00am to 3:00pm on Saturday, April 27th, for those who wish to come in and work on the NCL challenges using the full resources of the NetOp computer lab.
  3. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best results.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as this Team Game will represent the final Assessment grade before the Final Exam for this final term.

Support Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, a daily challenge will be posted on my Google Classroom page. These will usually come in the form of short quizzes or short answer response posts. Visit the page and complete the daily challenge to receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: April 22nd, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 26th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Game 2: The Regular Season Game

Objective: 

Students will use their accumulated knowledge and training to compete in the NCL Regular Season Game.

Links:

Topics Discussed:

  • Cyber Security
  • National Cyber League
  • NCL Spring Season
  • Regular Season Game

Assignment:

The Second Game: Regular Season Play
The Regular Season Game is a mandatory weekend game. By now, you should have your Bracketing Reports, and know what bracket you are competing in. You must participate in the Regular Season Game in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Regular Season gameplay starts at 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday, April 12th and ends at 6:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, April 14th.

  1. If you do not finish the competition during class time, please continue to advance through the challenges over the weekend. Do not forget that you can log into the NCL Stadium from any device with an Internet connection, but you may need tools available on a Windows or Linux workstation to solve some of the challenges.
  2. I will be on campus from 12:00pm to 3:00pm on Saturday, April 13th, for those who wish to come in and work on the NCL challenges using the full resources of the NetOp computer lab.
  3. It is recommended that you continue with the competition over the weekend and get as far as you can to achieve the best result in your final Scouting Report.

Please mark your calendars, and plan and prepare accordingly as the Individual Game will represent a significant portion of your grade for this final term.

Support Team:

For those who are not competing in the NCL challenges, a daily challenge will be posted on my Google Classroom page. These will usually come in the form of short quizzes or short answer response posts. Visit the page and complete the daily challenge to receive your participation points for the class!

Assigned: April 8th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 12th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Steganography Resources

Steganography is a method of hiding data within an ordinary-looking image or video in order to avoid detection. Files and messages can be embedded into other files in various ways, and then extracted by its recipient. Steganography can be combined with encryption as an extra step for hiding or protecting data.

Links:

What is Steganography?– An article introducing Steganography from Wired magazine.

Digital Invisible Ink Toolkit – A simple Java-based steganography tool that can hide a message inside a 24-bit color image so that knowing how it was embedded, or performing statistical analysis, does not make it any easier to find the concealed information.

Imagemagick – A powerful image creation software that can be used to convert images to and from a variety of formats, including text-based pixel plots. Pre-built into Kali Linux.

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Cryptography Links

Links:

Cryptii – A very cool and very fast “modular” decryption tool that lets you run a string of text through several encryption/decryption methods of your choice.

The Black Chamber – A great collection of interactive tools that explain and allow you to decrypt a variety of common (and some uncommon) encoding schemes.

Decode Ingress – A list of tools that can help you with decoding  passcodes, originally provided for use with the AR game Ingress. Tools for text manipulating, basic conversions like text to ASCII, HEX to Base64. Tools to decipher Morse code.  Good Image exif info grabbers, and image editing tools for Steganography puzzles (messages hidden in digital images). A range of great info and tools about various ciphers, and their implementations.

Tools for Noobs: Online Decryption Tool – Decrypts a string using various algorithms (e.g. Blowfish, DES, TripleDES, Enigma).

Rumkin Deciphering Tools – This is a page dedicated to simple text manipulation tools, which all can be replicated with just paper and pencil. An amazing resource for deciphering methods, including many that we will definitely encounter in NCL puzzles (Atbash, Railfence and Vigenere).

MD5hashing.net Encryption and Decryption – At md5hashing.net you can hash (encrypt) any string into 66 different hash types. As you probably know – decryption of any hash is impossible, but they offer reverse decryption via our database (~1000M records, and counting).

Splitbrain.org Encoding/Decoding Tools – This tool helps you to quickly run some text through various different encoding/decoding functions available in PHP. Great for a lot of different decoding possibilities rapidly

CodeBeautify.org Encryption/Decryption Tool – A nice, clean tool for decrypting codes that you know the key for, or encrypting codes with your own original key.

SQLite Viewer for Chrome – Chrome plugin for viewing SQLite databases in your browser. Allows opening and editing of SQLite databases without requiring admin access to install.