Siber Defense Club at Mount Si High School

Hey Cats! Make sure to come to our meeting next Monday as we will be going down to the North Commons at 2:45pm to take our yearbook picture. See you all there!

Yesterday we had a table at Wildcat Night promoting our club to future freshmen and current high schoolers. It was a blast seeing you guys, go ‘Cats!

Come to our table on Wildcat Night for a chance to get some free swags! Thanks to and .

Yesterday some of our club members met and participated in UBNetDef High School Lockdown v13. They worked hard defending their network while completing various tasks. Great work cats!

Welcome to Siber Defense Club’s instagram page! We hope to see you at our next meeting to have fun and learn more about cyber security.

MSHS Wildcats advance to CyberPatriot-XIV Washington State Round:

We are proud to announce that Team Alpha from Siber Defense Club has been placed in the Platinum Tier level as they advance to the Washington State Round. This is a result of their combined points performance scoring from Rounds 1 + 2. coupled with Cisco Challenge networking, placing them into the top 13% of public high school teams in the USA and top 17% of WA teams. All but one of Team Alpha's players are seniors, returning veterans for our club from past years. Although this does not happen every year, we have had veteran teams score high enough over the past 7 years to make Platinum.

We are also proud to announce that Team Bravo has placed in the Silver Tier level as they advance to the Washington State Round. These team members are new members this year to our club, except for one veteran who was in middle school last year and is a freshman now at Mount Si HS. Although it is common for a team composed of largely newbies to earn Silver Tier status as they advance, what is notable about Team Bravo this year is that they came close to making the Gold Tier, and are expected to easily earn Gold in next year's competition upon their return to the club. They are currently in the top 75% of all public high school teams in the nation.

CyberPatriot-XIV will be conducting the state rounds during the weekend Fri-Sun 12-14 Dec 2021. Each team chooses one of those days to compete during a maximum six hour window. Our teams are currently negotiating amongst themselves to choose the day and start times they will meet and compete during that weekend. Please join me in wishing them luck and encouraging them to provide their best performance representing Mount Si High School in Washington.

The top scoring teams from each state will advance to the CP-XIV Semi-Final Round that takes place during January 2022. Siber Defense Club had a Platinum Tier team advance last year to the Semi-Finals, which is not at all easy to do.

Mount Si Wildcats from Siber Defense Club competed in CyberPatriot Round 1 on Saturday 23 Oct 2021. We had two teams who competed against 2,045 other public high school teams across the US and Canada in the Open Division.

Team Alpha are returning club veterans who participated in CyberPatriot for 1 to 3 previous years, mostly seniors grade 12 this year. The four players in that team scored a combined 287.56 points (out of 330 max), consisting of 262 points in the Network Challenge of three OS images (Windows 10 Pro client, Windows 2019 Server, and Ubuntu linux) that they hardened plus 25.56 points in the Cisco Challenge of computer networking. If they maintain their relative position of 500 out of the 2045 teams in the next Round 2 they are likely to be qualified for placement into the Platinum Tier advancing to subsequent rounds, eg the WA State Round.

Team Bravo consists of four first-time players and one returning veteran player from last last year, and they scored a combined total of 185.75 points, consisting of 182 points in the three OS image hardening plus 3.75 points in the Cisco computer networking challenge. They will qualify at a minimum in the Silver Tier after the next Round 2, but with study, practice and effort are within sight of improving their performance to the Gold Tier ultimately, an admirable challenging goal for new players in this prestigious competition that gets harder in each subsequent Round.

Round 2 will take place over the weekend of 12-14 Nov 2021; the preliminary discussions amongst our teams is for both playing on Sat 13 Nov, likely afternoon. As has been the case for the past couple years, competition is being performed online remotely by players from their homes, using our club Discord server for voice/video/chat collaboration during the 6 hour live competition window.

Points from the recently completed Round 1 will be added to points earned in the next Round 2, and that sum will determine placement into Platinum, Gold, or Silver Tiers for advancement into the WA State Round. Wish our Wildcats luck and encourage them to sharpen their knowledge and skills moving forward in this competition season.

Talent is important, but teamwork will take you further. This weekend, teams are competing in CyberPatriot XIV National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. Teams will be faced with a variety of cyber challenges and only the top teams advance. Good luck Wildcats on Team Alpha and Team Bravo from Siber Defense Club!

Siber Defense Club is back again for 2021-22! SVSD middle and high school kids interested in cybersecurity, learning and competing against other schools in esport Capture The Flag games.

Weekly online Zoom meetings Wednesdays after school, 3:30-5:00. Our first meeting this week saw returning veterans and newbies. Join us next week to learn how to hack defensively and offensively, prepare for team play in the annual CyberPatriot, National Cyber League, CyberStart America, and other high school competitions we'll be doing again this year.

Sign up for our weekly enews email and info on how to attend meetings via either the Contact form at our club website https://siberdefense.weebly.com/contact.html or via email at [email protected] (provide full name, grade, SVSD student email and personal email if any).

Contact Use this form to contact us for more information about Siber Defense Club meetings, activities, training, contests, field trips, weekly News email list, or anything else (specify in "Comment").

National Cyber League Fall Season 2020 games have all ended, and we have six students who qualified for receiving the valuable NCL Scouting Report. This report lists their individual and team player scoring performance in nine cybersecurity challenge categories: cryptography, enumeration & exploitation, forensics, log analysis, network traffic analysis, open source intelligence, password cracking, scanning & reconnaissance, and web application exploitation. This Scouting Report is a valuable article of evidence that the student can use to compete for entry and advanced placement into college, vo-tech school, military, or even employment, as it records a level of competence and experience in information security and associated computer technologies that apply to a very wide variety of future careers, even choices outside of cybersecurity as it pertains to computing.

Not all players who participated nation-wide qualified for a Scouting Report, and given that the vast majority of NCL players are university students we are proud to see our MSHS Wildcats again performing at a collegiate level. We even had a middle school student from our school district compete with our club for the first time!

Our Wildcats, even our senior (grade 12) students will have another opportunity to further improve their Scouting Report scores later this school year during the NCL Spring Season 2021 games. Meanwhile the NCL online "gymnasium" where registered students learn and practice play will remain open for them through 15 December 2020.

We are very grateful to certain parents in our district who contribute funds to our club that allow students to register for NCL (and other games that have a fee), especially a parent who paid for NCL Fall Season and who wishes to remain anonymous.

Siber Defense Club has a team of players who advanced in the NCL Fall Season games to form a team to play in the NCL Team Game, which began today Fri 6 Nov and ends this coming Sun 8 Nov 2020. Team student captain Lucas Michels registered the team and provided pairing links to players to join. Unlike all the other competitive games our students play, there is no live public leaderboard for you to follow, but I've been told by the game platform provider that one is coming for the future 2021 games.

National Cyber League is one of the largest competitive cybersecurity games, targeted primarily to high school and university students. They conduct a Fall and Spring Season series of games, each one in the series more challenging than that last. The final series game is a team game, unlike the other games that must be played individually. One of the primary benefits for players is the receipt of an individual "Scouting Report" that provides valuable feedback on how a player scored in each category for guidance on improving, and for use in resumes as an article of proficiency evidence for college, job, and military application advantage. NCL is a Jeopardy-style CTF game that has been adjusted to conform to the NICE role framework, and has been a regular for the Siber Defense Club for several years.

Thank you to our gracious donors who contributed this year to fund our student registrations to NCL Fall Season!!

More info here:

National Cyber League The National Cyber League is focused on empowering young people in order to help end the incessant cycle of poverty, prejudice, and injustice whose impact after generations of neglect is playing out in our streets today. Our Player Ambassador team's primary objective is to promote diversity and incl...

Eight of our students registered to play the National Cyber League Fall Season. The first Pre-season Game ran for one week and ended this past Monday evening. Posting points automatically qualified students to advance to the Individual Game which takes place this coming weekend, Fri-Sun 23-25 Oct. This next game is more challenging, and participation is required for the players to advance to the Team Game that takes place soon.

Playing participants will receive a Scouting Report that lists their score in key subject areas that can be used for showing where to focus for improvement and also is used as an evidence article for competing for employment, college entrance, or advanced military placement in relevant computer science, engineering, and cyber security programs.

Meanwhile, National Cyber Security Awareness Month continues, and this week we focus on malware...the malicious software used by attackers to steal identities, passwords, and confidential information, to encrypt user files and hold them for ransom payment, and more.