Dupage Policy Journal

At its May 10 meeting, the Community Unit School District (CUSD) 200 Board of Education welcomed the Cyber Patriots of Wheaton Warrenville South High School to recognize them for placing first in April's Central Illinois High School Cyber Defense Competition.

The competition was held at Illinois State University and pitted students against hackers trying to break into a company that the students must protect.

“This is a huge, tremendous celebration for our Cyber Patriots team,” Superintendent Jeff Schuler said in the meeting. “They took first place in what I understand to be the competition this year. And so certainly we're proud of that.”

The team is sponsored by Lori Blackburn, who introduced the team to the board. Members of the team practiced a variety of situations and methods throughout the year to prepare for the competition, which serves as a real-time demonstration on how they can stop hackers from breaking into a company’s digital infrastructure.

At the meeting, student and team member Stephan Bolivar explained the ins and outs of the competition. He noted that the competition involved defending several computers and systems from live hackers who were actively trying to attack them. Each student had different tasks for them to take part in to protect the digital infrastructure of a company.

“I was in charge of one of the Linux operating systems through a virtual machine, and some of the things that I had to do were just like secure the virtual machine, such as changing passwords, looking to see which programs were necessary or unnecessary, and making sure that we deleted them properly so it would eliminate any chances that the red team or the hackers could find backdoors to access our computer,” Bolivar said in the meeting.

Fellow team member Charlie Bernard also spoke about the competition, saying that Illinois State University brings cybersecurity professionals from State Farm as well as their own professors to be involved for the competition, which lasts several hours. He commented that not only do they have machines already infected with viruses and malware, they also are not secure with passwords.

“It's probably the best learning experience that I've had in my high school career,” he said in the meeting. “It’s a lot of fun and we hope to keep it alive for the next generations of people.”

All of the students were proud of their work and excited about possible future careers in cybersecurity.