Tag Archives: National Cyber League

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Week 2: The Preseason Game

Objective: 

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

Links:

Topics Discussed:

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

Assignment:

The First Game: Preseason Play
The Preseason is a week-long mandatory game. You must participate in the Preseason in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Preseason gameplay starts at 1:00 p.m. ET on Monday, April 1st and ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, April 8th.

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 Ethical Behavior/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 12th.
  2. Remember that Thursday, April 4th and Friday, April 5th are a split schedule due to AIMS Science testing. You will not be here on Thursday, but you will have two solid hours to complete NCL challenges on Friday, so please use your time wisely.
  3. 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 Regular Season Individual Game is a three-day mandatory game. You must participate in the Regular Season in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Regular Season Game starts at 10:00 am MST on Friday, April 12th and ends at 6:00 p.m. MST on Sunday, April 14th.

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.

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 1st, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 8th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

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 will be open next week. 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. 3/28 – 5/24: Gym Training
    2. 4/1 – 4/8: Mandatory Preseason Game
    3. 4/12 – 4/14: Regular Season Individual Game
    4. 4/26 – 4/28: Postseason Team Game

The First Game: Preseason Play
The Preseason is a week-long mandatory game. You must participate in the Preseason in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Preseason gameplay starts at 1:00 p.m. ET on April 1st and ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on April 8th.

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 Ethical Behavior/Rules of Conduct.

Assigned: March 18th, 2019
Teacher Pacing Due Date: March 19th, 2019

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Final Week: Finishing Strong

Objective: 

Students will complete their training 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
  • Regular Season
  • NCL Gym Training
  • Final Exam
Assignment:
  1. This week, we will complete our training in the Gym to enhance our understanding of Cybersecurity principles, and to prepare returning NetOp students for competition in the NCL 2018 Fall Season. It is expected that everyone will complete all the Gym exercises by May 11th.
  2. At this time you will receive final credit for the sum of the Gym exercises that you have completed, so continue working in the Gym throughout the duration of this week.
  3. Review for the end-of-course final exam will begin on May 14th. Review materials will be provided on Monday.
  4. The final exam will be held for all NetOp students on Friday, May 18th. It is a 100 question multiple choice quiz covering all of the chapters studied during the first half of the course. We will review this material throughout the week of the 14th.
  5. Please remember that the Final Exam is weighted with the other assessments to represent 20% of your overall grade. Please prepare accordingly.

 

Assigned: May 7th, 2018
Teacher Pacing Due Date: May 11th, 2018
Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Week 3: 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
  • Regular Season
  • NCL Gym Training
Assignment:
  1. The Regular Season Game is complete, and while not everyone put as much effort into the game as I hoped, we do have some solid performances to celebrate. As expected, this was a learning experience for everyone, especially myself. This week we’ll discuss the competition, how each player performed, and what lessons we can take from our experience in the NCL competition.
  2. This week, we will continue our training in the Gym to learn more about Cybersecurity principles, and to prepare returning Net/Op students for competition in the NCL 2018 Fall Season.
  3. Many of the exercises required tools that we did not have immediate access to. We will use the continued Gym training to determine what tools we need access to, acquire, install and implement them for use in future NCL competitions.
  4. It is expected that everyone will complete all the Gym exercises by May 11th. This will allow for us to prepare for the end-of-course final exam over the week of May 14th. You will receive credit for completion of the exercises, as well as points earned, so continue working in the Gym, regardless of how much (or how little) you have already completed.
  5. The final exam will be held on May 18th. It is a 100 question multiple choice quiz covering all of the chapters studied during the first half of the course. We will review this material the week of the 14th.

 

Assigned: April 17th, 2018
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 20th, 2018
Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Resources: Cryptography Links

Links:

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.

Networking and Operating Systems

National Cyber League Week 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
Assignment:
  1. The Regular Season Game will open at 11am MST on Friday, April 13th, and remain open until 7pm MST on Sunday, April 15th.
  2. Continue your training in the Gym to prepare for the Regular Season competition on Friday.
  3. Remember that Friday is a short day, due to the Spring Sports Assembly schedule. We will begin the Regular Season Game as soon as class begins, and get as far as we can. You are more than welcome to stay for lunch to continue the competition, if you choose to do so. My room will also be open during 8th hour, if you wish to come back to continue the competition.
  4. If you do not finish the competition during class time (and it is highly likely that you will not), 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 Play
The Regular Season Game is a three-day mandatory game. You must participate in the Regular Season in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Regular Season Game starts at 11:00 am MST on Friday, April 13th and ends at 7:00 p.m. MST on Sunday, April 15th.

This is the big game – the one we’ve been preparing for. Get a good night’s rest, eat your Wheaties (or Lucky Charms, if that’s how you roll), and be here at 10:15am on Friday to get logged in to the NCL Stadium, and be ready to compete. Use all your knowledge, training and skills to do your very best, and we’ll discuss the results after this weekend. Good luck, and may the Force be with you! Always.

Assigned: April 9th, 2018
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 15th, 2018
Uncategorized

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 open now. The NCL Gym provides practice challenges to help prepare players for Preseason, Regular Season and Postseason. While practicing in the NCL Gym, access the solutions guide to receive step-by-step instructions to help you understand the more difficult challenges.
  2. Log into the Gym
  3. Read the FAQ – you need to know the NCL lingo
  4. Mark your calendars with the following important NCL Preseason and Regular season dates:
    1. 3/30 – 5/25: Gym Training
    2. 4/4 – 4/10: Preseason Game
    3. 4/13 – 4/15: Regular season Game
    4. 4/27 – 4/29: Postseason Game

The First Game: Preseason Play
The Preseason is a week-long mandatory game. You must participate in the Preseason in order to receive an NCL Scouting Report. The Preseason gameplay starts at 1:00 p.m. ET on April 4th and ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on April 10th.

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 Ethical Behavior/Rules of Conduct.

Assigned: April 2nd, 2018
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 4th, 2018