Published on September 30th, 2021 📆 | 2724 Views ⚑
0Concordia undergrads win a national cybersecurity competition
The excitement of being a part of the top cybersecurity team in Canada has not yet sunk in for Tristan Gosselin-Hane and Alexandre Lavoie, undergraduate students in Concordiaâs Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering and cybersecurity enthusiasts.
This summer, their team Cubermitis topped the leaderboard at the CyberSCI national Capture-The-Flag (CTF) cybersecurity competition. Nicolas Berbiche and Charles Guertin from Ăcole de technologie supĂŠrieure (ĂTS) round out the winning team.
They will now go on to represent Canada at the European and International CyberSCI competitions in Prague and Athens this fall and winter respectively.
The underdog team spirit
CTF events are a specific kind of cybersecurity competition, where participants must beat challenges to obtain the highest score, including by collecting âflagsâ embedded in those challenges. The competitions are known to kickstart careers in cybersecurity for successful young competitors.
Cubermitis is a CTF team formed primarily of students from ĂTS and Concordiaâs Gosselin-Hane.
âWhen one of our regional team members became ineligible for the national competition, I reached out to Alexandre,â Gosselin-Hane explains. âHeâs a fellow Concordian whom Iâd never met in person due to the pandemic, but we had a few run-ins at previous online CTF competitions. I knew he would be a good fit for our team.â
Cubermitis typically excels in software development, site reliability engineering and just a bit of information security. The team members knew they would face tough, specialized competitors.
âWe definitely came in with a âletâs do our best and weâll be happy no matter whatâ attitude,â Lavoie recalls. âThis mindset probably helped us unknowingly stay calm and not stress too much beforehand. I also met most of the team for the first time the day of the event, but from the start there was a very strong chemistry.â
Although the competition was virtual, the four team members secluded themselves in separate cottages, with only their equipment and nature around them, to avoid distraction. It also allowed them to come together quickly.
By the end of the first day, they led the pack by almost double the assigned points.
Keys to success
Communication: Cubermitisâs winning strategy centred around a process of open communication. One member would throw out an idea, another would build upon it and eventually someone else would end up solving the problem.
Project management: The team stayed organized and made sure that everyone was working on different things so that no work was duplicated. They immediately created a variety of separate text channels to gather and share information about each challenge and made sure that everyone had the necessary information to work on those challenges.
Believing: Lavoie and Gosselin-Hane stress the importance of trusting in your abilities and believing in yourself and your skills. âDonât let yourself be demotivated because of all the people you think are better than you. After all, some people might be all talk and no show,â Gosselin-Hane says.
âIâve always wanted to make cybersecurity more accessibleâ
The second day of competition, Cubermitis struggled. As the scoreboard clock wound down with 30 minutes left in the competition, the team members hoped that their resounding lead the day before would help keep them on the podium. And it did.
The team placed first in Canada, beating out well-established CTF teams. Gosselin-Hane and Lavoie put Concordiaâs undergraduate students on the national cybersecurity map.
âIâve always wanted to make cybersecurity more accessible,â Lavoie says. âIâd love to graduate knowing Iâve made an impact on cybersecurity at Concordia.â
Learn more about Concordiaâs Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.
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