FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Brooklyn Transforms into Cyber Security Central as Student Hackers,
Researchers and Professionals Compete in NYU-Poly Challenges
NEW YORK, October 28, 2010 – Today and tomorrow, Brooklyn becomes the epicenter for the
future of cyber security.
Three hundred of the country’s best student hackers, including the nation’s top young applied
cyber security researchers, along with New York City’s network of cyber security professionals,
winners of the fabled DEF CON cyber challenges and the keynote speaker from the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, will converge on the campus of Polytechnic Institute of New
York University for the 7th Annual Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) challenges.
The CSAW competitions are organized by NYU-Poly cyber security students and comprise the
most comprehensive set of cyber challenges for students. Finalists compete for prizes and
scholarships by solving simulated security crises likely to emerge in an increasingly wired world.
Keynote speaker will be Sean Paul McGurk, director, Control Systems Security Program, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security. Bryan Hatton of the Idaho National Laboratory Cyber
Security Team will open the event as a particularly appropriate speaker: He led the 2020 winning
team in the most famous of hacker challenges, the DEF CON Capture the Flag cyber challenge.
“CSAW illustrates the growing recognition of the need to educate highly skilled security
professionals as well as the rapid acceleration of knowledge in the cyber security field,” said
Nasir Memon, who heads NYU-Poly’s cyber security program. “In only its second year, our high
school forensics challenge attracted 110 teams from elite schools in15 different states. That
shows how many schools realize they must start early to infuse students with the math and
engineering that they will need to succeed in cyber security in their university studies and
professional lives.”
This year’s CSAW Embedded Systems Challenge also demonstrates how dramatically security
tools are advancing in response to cyber threats, Memon said. “This hardware challenge is
particularly difficult – as well as particularly important in the real world. During manufacturing,
unscrupulous vendors can insert difficult-to-detect trojans that can wreak havoc later,” he said.
“Trust-HUB, the source that security professionals use to log news of these dangerous hardware
trojans, reports only 22. Two years ago, the highly skilled student finalists in our Embedded
Systems Challenge were able to design 50 attacks against hardware. This year, they developed
216 attacks. That is evidence of the vulnerability of real-world hardware, but it also illustrates
how topflight schools are helping these students analyze trojans in order to better defend against
them in the real world.”
- more -
2
Jeyavijayan Rajendran, graduate student in electrical and computer engineering and the leader of
the team that won last year’s Embedded Systems Challenge, leads the team of NYU-Poly
students who designed this year’s challenges.
Judges are James L. Howard, director and chief engineer, Information Assurance, L3
Communications, Communication Systems-East (CS-E); Ben Epstein, co-founder of Septet
Systems, chief strategy officer of Aqsacom Inc./Aqsacom SAS and vice president – special
projects of OpCoast; Keith O'Brien, distinguished systems engineer, Cisco Systems; Kurt
Rosenfeld, system engineer, Google; Lok Yan, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome,
N.Y.; and Youngok Pino, electronics engineer, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, N.Y.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Xilinx sponsor the Embedded Systems Challenge.
Finalists in the Embedded Systems Challenge are:










Aswin Krishna, Seetharam Narasimhan (captain) and Xinmu Wang, Case Western
Reserve University;
David Graziano (captain), Jamin Hitchcock, Tim Meyer, Justin Rilling and Xinying
Wang, Iowa State University;
Georg T. Becker (captain), Ashwin Lakshminarasimhan, Lang Lin and Sudheendra
Srivathsa, University of Massachusetts;
Trey Reece, Vanderbilt University;
Xuehui Zhang, University of Connecticut;
Yier Jin (captain) and Nathan Kupp, Yale University;
Peter Wihl, Polytechnic Institute of NYU;
Shruthi Sankanna Muralidhar, Srinivasulu Pola and Nischay Tata (captain), NYU-Poly;
Hetal Borad and Xiaofei (Rex) Guo (captain), NYU-Poly, and
Haridayal Jaswal (captain), NYU-Poly, and Yerra Trinath, The City College of New
York of The City University of New York.
Efstratios Gavas, NYU-Poly doctoral candidate in computer science, heads the High School
Cyber Forensics Challenge team.
Judges are Mark Althouse, technical director, cryptographic products engineering, U.S.
Department of Defense; Dan Srebnick, associate commissioner and chief information security
officer, New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications; Pete
Taylor, vice president, Technology Risk Group, Goldman Sachs; and Eric K. Thompson, founder
and chief technology officer, AccessData.
- more -
3
High school finalists for the forensics challenge are:












Allied Health and Science, Team 0x21, Neptune, New Jersey;
Biotechnology High School, Team Ramrod, Freehold, New Jersey;
Bronx High School of Science, Digital Autopsy, Bronx, New York;
High Technology High School, md5 hash browns, Lincroft, New Jersey;
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Team MK ULTRA, Aurora, Illinois;
Poolesville High School, Eric Harrison, Kevin Harrison, and Jack Zhu; Poolesville,
Maryland;
Poolesville High School, Team Echo, Poolesville, Maryland;
Red Bank Regional, Confliker, Little Silver, New Jersey;
Southern Utah Center for Computer, Engineering and Science, David Morgan, Jeremiah
Schopen, Jake Green, Cedar City, Utah;
Staten Island Technical High School, WhizKidz, Staten Island, New York;
The Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science, GAMS Cyber Forensics Team,
Bowling Green, Kentucky; and
Wellesley High School, Pun Intended, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
The CSAW challenges are also sponsored by AccessData, BAE Systems, Center for Advanced
Technology in Communications, LGS Innovations and AT&T, which sponsors the AT&T
Award for Best Applied Security Research Paper.
NYU-Poly was one of the earliest schools to introduce a cyber security program, receiving
National Security Agency (NSA) approval nearly a decade ago. Designated as both a Center of
Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education and a Center of Academic Excellence
in Research by the NSA, the school houses a National Science Foundation-funded Information
Systems and Internet Security (ISIS) Laboratory, the nerve center of cyber security research.
Under Memon, ISIS students create and run the annual CSAW games.
About Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly Polytechnic University), an affiliate of
New York University, is a comprehensive school of engineering, applied sciences, technology
and research, and is rooted in a 156-year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship:
i2e. The institution, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second-oldest private engineering school. In
addition to its main campus in New York City at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, it
also offers programs at sites throughout the region and around the globe. Globally, NYU-Poly
has programs in Israel, China and is an integral part of NYU's campus in Abu Dhabi. For more
information, visit www.poly.edu.
# # #
Contact:
Kathleen Hamilton
718-260-3792
hamilton@poly.edu