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Global Search for Best White Hat Student Hackers Narrows as 5 Countries Prep for NYU Cyber Security Awareness Week GamesBROOKLYN, N.Y., Oct. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An elite corps of 400 high school, college, and graduate students bested thousands of teams to advance to the finals of the world's biggest student-led cybersecurity contest: the New York University Tandon School of Engineering's annual Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) games. Among the events spread over five days (November 9 - 13, 2017) of the CSAW finals will be Capture the Flag (CTF), High School Forensics (HSF), and the Embedded Security Challenge (ESC). Last year CSAW expanded to include NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), one of the top universities for computer science education in India. This year, CSAW expands even further, with new hubs in Valence, France, at Grenoble INP-Esisar, one of six engineering schools of the Grenoble Institute of Technology, and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, located in the new Advanced Technology Park in the Negev, Israel's "cyber alley." CSAW Israel is organized by BGU's Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering and the IBM Cyber Security Center of Excellence, located in Ben-Gurion University. In North America, India, France, and the United Arab Emirates, finals take place November 9 - 11, 2017. In Israel, finals take place November 12 and 13, 2017. Student teams from India, the Middle East and North Africa, France, Israel, and North America will compete simultaneously — and in person — at the five schools. Global Demand for Cybersecurity Education For the second consecutive year, the NYU Center for Cybersecurity will award scholarships to those who win first place in the CTF, ESC, or the Applied Research challenges at any of the five regional hubs and are admitted to NYU Tandon's highly competitive doctoral programs. Scholarships include full tuition and fellowships. Additionally, over $1 million in scholarships will be offered to all finalists and winners of the CSAW High School Forensics (HSF) Challenge at NYU Tandon. Scholarships are contingent upon admission to NYU Tandon and satisfactory academic progress. Capture The Flag Players of all levels and ages from around the world registered for CTF, the flagship event of CSAW. After 48 hours of around-the-clock software hacking contests, a top-notch group of college students bested more than 2,400 teams — an estimated 10,000 players — from 95 countries to be finalists at one of the five global CSAW hubs. Ten North American teams will compete in CTF finals at NYU Tandon. During the preliminary rounds of CTF, teams were presented with a series of real-world computer security challenges. As competitors advanced through the challenges, they earned points, or "flags," with winners qualifying for cash prizes, bragging rights, and travel awards to compete at the finals. CTFs are not only essential training for students and cybersecurity professionals, they are also a way to introduce young people worldwide to the field and entice them to pursue information security careers. To view teams competing at the CSAW finals in all five regions, visit: https://ctf.csaw.io/ High School Forensics The CSAW HSF challenge introduces high school-age novices to the cybersecurity field, attracting students who enjoy solving puzzles and encouraging newcomers with an entry-level CTF-style game that focuses on forensics topics. Nearly 600 teams participated around the world, with 29 teams winning coveted slots to compete in person this year at CSAW final rounds at NYU Tandon, NYU Abu Dhabi, and Grenoble INP-Esisar. To view teams competing at the CSAW finals, including ten teams who will compete at NYU Tandon, visit: https://hsf.csaw.io/ Embedded Security Challenge Founded in 2008 by NYU Tandon Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ramesh Karri and his students, the Embedded Security Challenge — the oldest and largest hardware hacking competition in the world and the most difficult event at CSAW — contributes to worldwide scholarship in the emerging field. The tournament employs a "red team, blue team" format that mimics real-world attacks. This year's challenge, developed in partnership with the U.S. Office of Naval Research, requires the competitors to make programmable logic controllers more resilient to cybersecurity threats by employing novel fault detectio and recovery techniques. The qualification round required teams to describe their detection and recovery strategy. At Finals, teams will demonstrate solutions live on Raspberry Pi microchip platforms. The competition is a cornerstone program of NYU's hardware security group. Part of NYU Center for Cyber Security and comprising researchers at NYU Tandon and NYU Abu Dhabi, the group has become a leading force in microchip security. Finals will be held at NYU Tandon, NYU Abu Dhabi, IIT Kanpur, and Grenoble INP-Esisar. To view the teams competing at the CSAW finals, including seven who will compete at NYU Tandon, visit: https://github.com/momalab/csaw_esc_2017/blob/master/esc2017_finalists.md Law and Policy This competition — running at NYU Tandon and IIT Kanpur — attracts students who are interested in the nexus of law, policy, and emerging security issues. In the U.S., teams were asked to submit briefs related to the disclosure of investigative methods that use computer code. In India, the topic focused on policy interventions to solve the fake news epidemic. After a written qualifying round, finalists will come to New York and Kanpur to present their best legal arguments for the competition's final round. To view the four teams competing at CSAW Law and Policy finals at NYU Tandon, visit: https://csaw.engineering.nyu.edu/policy/finalists Applied Research Recognized as the leading competition for young cybersecurity researchers, the Applied Research Competition accepts only peer-reviewed security papers that have already been published by scholarly journals and conferences. This year, top academics and practitioners in the field reviewed 170 papers to arrive at the list of finalists. During the CSAW final round, one of the student authors of each paper will present in poster format to judges, who will evaluate the originality, relevance, and accuracy of the research. Finals for this competition will be held at NYU Tandon, NYU Abu Dhabi, IIT Kanpur, and Grenoble INP-Esisar. To view the 11 teams competing in the CSAW Applied Research finals at NYU Tandon, visit: https://csaw.engineering.nyu.edu/research/finalists Cyber Journalism Award New for 2017, this award recognizes excellence in reporting on cyber security across all journalistic categories. A joint project of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, the competition is open to professional journalists and student scribes alike. The winner will be announced later this month. The CSAW games were founded in 2003 as a small contest by and for NYU Tandon students; CSAW has grown to become the most comprehensive set of challenges by and for students around the globe. NYU students continue to design the contests under the mentorship of information security professionals and faculty. NYU Tandon's student-led Offensive Security, Incident Response and Internet Security (OSIRIS) laboratory, home to weekly student-led Hack Night training and student research, leads the HSF and CTF challenges. Students from the NYU School of Law design the CSAW Law & Policy Challenge; and Ramesh Karri, NYU Tandon professor of electrical and computer engineering and Charles Seife, professor at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, conceived the CSAW Cyber Journalism Award. Students at the partner universities take leadership roles at their respective CSAW hubs, as well. "Data security is a global issue in which attackers can come from anywhere and physical borders are no defense against threats," said Karri, who is also co-founder of the NYU Center for Cyber Security. "Top cybersecurity schools across the world recognize that competitions like CSAW's Capture the Flag and High School Forensics are valuable tools for engaging, educating and preparing students for a field that for the foreseeable future will be hungry for new talent and fresh ideas. Educating a new generation of security experts is of the utmost importance." In keeping with the CSAW tradition at NYU Tandon of introducing finalists to professionals and career opportunities during the event, Andrew Tannenbaum, chief cybersecurity counsel at IBM, will deliver the keynote presentation at CSAW North America on November 9. Dino Dai Zovi, co-founder and CTO of Capsule8, will present the Security Expert Luncheon keynote on November 10. CSAW'17 North American Sponsors are: Gold Level — Capsule8, IBM, the United States Navy Office of Naval Research, Palo Alto Networks; Silver Level — BAE Systems, Bridgewater; Bronze Level — Bloomberg, Facebook, Jane Street, Jefferies, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Raytheon, RBC Capital Markets, TD Bank, Uber; Supporting Level — Cubic Corporation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, National Security Agency, NCC Group, Rhymetec, The Ruth & Jerome A. Siegel Foundation, United States Secret Service; Contributing: Applied Computer Security Associates, Carnegie Mellon University, CTFd, Optiv, Red Balloon Security, Sandia National Laboratories. For more information on CSAW, visit https://csaw.engineering.nyu.edu. Follow @CSAW_NYUTandon. About the NYU Tandon School of Engineering About NYU Abu Dhabi About IIT Kanpur About Grenoble INP - Esisar About Ben-Gurion University www.facebook.com/nyutandon
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