Students from Flinders University have finished among the top four universities in Australia at the Australian Government’s Cyber Security Challenge.
Flinders also made it a one-two in South Australia, with the second placed Flinders team finishing 16th – six places above the top placed University of Adelaide team.
The third Flinders team came in an impressive 34th place, ahead of teams from institutions including The University of Melbourne, Queensland University of Technology and the Australian National University.
Only teams from the University of New South Wales, Sydney and Monash finished ahead of the top placed Flinders team, which came in seventh overall from 57 teams.
The Cyber Security Challenge is part of the Australian Government’s response to the growing cyber threat to companies and institutions across the country.
Through the challenge, it hopes to increase awareness of the cyber security threat and encourage a new generation of cyber security experts to gain experience and understanding so that they can contribute to the nation’s cyber defence.
Flinders University Computer Sciences Lecturer Neville Williams said it was a remarkable performance by Flinders which proved not just the calibre of Flinders’ computer science students, but also of the training they are receiving.
“All of our teams can be very proud of their achievements,” Mr Neville said.
“Cyber security is one of the great issues facing society, as scams and cyber attacks can come from anywhere in the world, and that challenge is growing all the time.
“Our first placed team, comprised of Adam Rigg, Tobias Wooldridge, Timothy Moore and Russell Peake finished just behind the first Monash team and ahead of the first ANU team, which is an incredible performance.”
Mr Williams went on to describe the kind of tasks faced by the participating teams.
“The teams were required to explore and go far beyond their routine, in-depth knowledge and delve into various information sources through tasks related to, among others, web application penetration, corporate network penetration, network forensics and programming.”
Flinders teams also took awards including a Gold Merit Badge for the first team to solve the first Android Forensics Challenge, a Silver Merit Badge for the second team to solve the third Android Forensics Challenge and a Bronze Merit Badge for the third team to solve the first of the “Mad Coding Skillz” Challenge.
Full details of the Flinders results are below. Full competition results are here.
Team 1: “test team pls ignore”; Position: 7th; Team members: Adam Rigg, Tobias Wooldridge, Timothy Moore and Russell Peake
Team 2: “JAPH”; Position: 16th; Team members: Cameron Thornton, Blaise Roth, Aaron Farrugia and Ruben Maher
Team 3: “test team plz ignore”; Position: 34th; Team members: David Edmeades, Kevin Clark, Jack Leedham and Branden Thomas.