AIR FORCE ACADEMY, COLO. -- The National Security Agency (NSA) is putting our future military leaders to the test during the 12th Annual Cyber Defense Exercise.
Each of the five federal agencies are competing in the exercise, along with the Air Force Institute of Technology, a graduate school, and the Royal Military College of Canada.
"So we're all hooked up right now to a shared network that ends at the NSA, and the NSA has a bunch of people who are essentially practicing war gaming, their offensive skills, against the networks which we've been setting up over the past weeks," Cadet Michael Winstead said.
The teams must defend their networks against the NSA's red cell teams while maintaining their own network.
"It starts off with just basic services. We have a web server, a mail server, things like that. However, they throw at us mid-competition a General's laptop which of course has a bunch of malware on it and it goes to a bunch of bad places. And then, also new this year, is a web server with a bunch of vulnerabilities to where they can alter the website," Winstead said.
The teams are competing on a virtual, private, network but the experience is as real as it gets.
"We're not on the real government network. We have a special what's called a virtual private network that we use just for this exercise, so none of this traffic leaks out to you know your grandma's email or anything like that," Dr. Martin Carlisle, Deputy for Academics Department of Computer Science and Coach of the cyber competition team, said.
Air Force Academy Cadets have been putting in 12 hours a day during the exercise, which lasts for three days.
"They've been doing an astounding job. I've been very impressed. They've shown a lot of initiative in things that wouldn't have necessarily occurred to me and they're doing great. I'm very proud of them," Carlisle said.
In addition to protecting their network against red cell activity and maintaining their network, the teams are also thrown a few surprises along the way.
"The NSA has sent us a gray cell person, and that gray cell person plays an uneducated user. So he opens all the attachments in his email, clicks on links that you would rather he not click on and in general wreaks havoc on the network," Carlisle said.
"By adding these new weak points that's where they're hoping to catch us off guard and be able to score against us," Winstead said.
Although it is an exercise, it's still a competition with a trophy and bragging rights on the line.
"We have everyone saying 'oh well, we're the best in cyber space right now,' this is the place to show it. This is the competition where General's can brag about 'we won the cyber defense exercise,'" Winstead said.
The cadets are hoping to take home their first win.
"This is taken very seriously by Flag Officers and all the services for sort of bragging rights. It's basically the Commander in Chief's trophy of cyber, so there is a lot of visibility," Carlisle said.
"We've been competing over the past five years. We started out dead last, and then we were third place, and then we were second place, and thus far we're looking at doing better than last year for the final standings," Winstead said.
Cadets said they take exercises like these seriously because it's more than just a game.
"This is absolutely what I want to do, and so I get to do my job before I have to do my job in a way," Winstead said.
"This is great real life experience. Most of our cadets are going to become cyber warfare operators for the United States Air Force," Carlisle said.
As of Wednesday the Air Force Academy was in second place behind the A Team from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
The exercise ends Thursday afternoon and the winner will be announced Friday morning.
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