A Capture The Flag (CTF) Platform and Exercises for an Intro to Computer Security Class

  • Zack Kaplan
  • , Ning Zhang
  • , Stephen V. Cole

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Cybersecurity education is becoming increasingly important as demand for cybersecurity professionals increases. Hands-on skills are a critical component of cybersecurity education, and a variety of exercise types have been developed to teach these skills. In this work, we seek to apply the benefits of gamified learning to an introductory cybersecurity curriculum in the form of a set of Capture the Flag (CTF) challenges offered as hands-on exercises for an intro-level course. We created 20 jeopardy-style challenges of varying difficulty based on prior research on the use of gamification in education, and we configured the open-source CTFd platform to host our challenges. Student responses to post-challenge surveys suggest that the CTF component of the course was effective in improving perceived learning and student engagement.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationITiCSE 2022 - Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages597-598
Number of pages2
ISBN (Electronic)9781450392006
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 7 2022
Event27th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE 2022 - Dublin, Ireland
Duration: Jul 8 2022Jul 13 2022

Publication series

NameAnnual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE
Volume2
ISSN (Print)1942-647X

Conference

Conference27th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE 2022
Country/TerritoryIreland
CityDublin
Period07/8/2207/13/22

Keywords

  • capture the flag
  • ctf
  • cybersecurity
  • gamification
  • hands-on exercise
  • student engagement

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