ICS in the News: ICS Advises the Air Force Association on its Cyber Defense Competition

Reuters had an interesting article on the operations division at ICS, covering the Air Force Association's Cyber Defense Competition. In the article, the AFA mentions that competition benefits greatly through the advice and assistance of ICS's Greg White, director of ICS's operations division. Through Greg's efforts, ICS also created and conducts the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.

Additionally, The Journal covered the announcement as well, covering how the 125,000-member AFA is geared to promote public understanding of aerospace power and its critical relationship to national security. The article also describes Greg White as a "cyber security expert" and discusses his service as an advisor for the competition.

For more information on ICS and its operations, commercialization, and research divisions, visit the ICS site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe, PMP
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Cyber Security Awareness Week at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University

It's Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. This seems like as good a week as any to raise awareness of cyber security, so the Institute for Cyber Security shall in spirit celebrate this week as well. :-)

Last year, 500 students competed in these challenges, and their sixth annual CSAW looks to trump that--they've alread taking registration for their annual competition, which will unfold over the next couple of months. The challenges pit high school, college, and graduate students against each other in a series of cyber-security-related competitions, which includes analyzing an infected hardware platform, detecting application security vulnerabilities, and solving a fictional murder mystery using digital forensics.

Their main site and Facebook page has more information on their contest, and prizes include cash and scholarships, as well as travel grants. This is a great idea and looks like a fantastic way to engage students in studying or even pursuing cyber security. Best of luck to all participants!

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

UK Web Host Announces Winner to its Innovative Mashup Contest

At the Institute for Cyber Security our love for mashups and contests is legendary, and a few months ago, we found a mashup contest by 34SP, a web host located in the United Kingdom. This Pub Mashup Competition, amusingly, had only one requirement: the mashup had to do with pubs in some way.

Last week, 34SP named PubStop as the winning entry. The mashup finds the closest pubs to a highway route, helping a driver determine the location of the nearest pint, or even re-route their driving directions to include a stop at the pub. This application won the creator a cash prize and the use of a virtual private server for a year. Perhaps ICS should host its own web application competition?

Image is of Kyrie's, a famous pub in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

The U.S. Cyber Challenge

A national "talent search" for high school and college students interested in working in cybersecurity was launched today. The so-called U.S. Cyber Challenge's goal is to find 10,000 young Americans to be "cyber guardians and cyber warriors", and is being sponsored by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, is also being led in conjunction with the SANS Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and several university and private-industry partners.

With a name reminiscent of DARPA's famous Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, the US Cyber Challenge is more of a series of ongoing contests, rather than one defined competition. The cyber challenge will provide participants with competition, training, recognition and a chance to win scholarships. The three ongoing competitions are:

• The CyberPatriot Defense Competition: a high school cyber defense competition run by the Air Force Association
• The DC3 Digital Forensics Competition: a DoD competition that focuses on cyber investigation and forensics. The DoD is offering a one million dollar prize to people who find solutions to digital forensics problems that currently can’t be solved.
• NetWars Capture the Flag Competition: a SANS Institute challenge, played across a network on a custom OS, with the aim of penetrating the opponent’s net security and controlling key files on a server.

Interesting stuff! More information on the competition can be found on the CSIS site.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

Amazon Announces Third Annual Startup Challenge

At the Institute for Cyber Security, our Incubator focuses on helping security startups benefit from the expertise and resources of our technical staff. As a result, we're always interested in new ways to advance a startup's mission. And of course, ICS loves contests. So when Amazon announced its new AWS startup challenge, we thought it sounded great!

First prize is $50,000 plus other accouterments provideed by Amazon. More information on the contest, as well as a link to their rules, can be found at their contest site. Maybe after collecting your winnings, your startup can be the next great idea to emerge from the ICS Incubator!

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

UK Web Host Unveils an Innovative Mashup Contest

As is well-documented, we at the Institute for Cyber Security enjoy both mashups and contests. So imagine our delight when 34SP, a web host located in the United Kingdom, announced its mashup contest yesterday.

In fine British fashion, their only requirement is that the mashup have to do with pubs in some way. More information on the contest, as well as a link to their rules, can be found at their contest site. We might humbly suggest securing that wonderful new mashup with MashSSL, invented by SafeMashups, the latest company to emerge from the ICS Incubator!

Image is of Kyrie's, a famous pub in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

ICS Startup SafeMashups Inc. Covered in the News

As covered previously, SafeMashups, Inc., the latest startup from the Institute for Cyber Security, will be speaking at the RSA conference Innovator's Sandbox and has been selected as a finalist in the "Most Innovative Company at RSA Conference 2009" contest they are hosting.

BusinessWire caught the initial press release that discusses each of the ten companies and SafeMashups in specific. From the article:

SafeMashups Inc. is an application authentication pioneer that has developed the MashSSL protocol  which provides a standardized way for web applications to securely identify each other when mashing through a potentially untrusted user or browser. MashSSL allows web applications running emerging Web 2.0 protocols like OAuth, XHR, OpenAJAX, OpenID, etc. to authenticate each other securely using their existing SSL credentials.

SearchSecurity also covered SafeMashups in an article describing how security budget issues may resonate at the RSA Conference, and how vendors that address application security issues are beginning to gain more attention, such as SafeMashups, where its software tools help developers build Web applications more securely. The aricle also mentions the free MashSSL Web Toolkit and free SafeMashups Community Service.

Nemertes Research also highlighed the need for enterprise mashups security in a brief on SafeMashups. In their study, they found 42% of participants are already using mashups, but that for the enterprise, they must implement strong security controls to protect internal mashup applications from insider threats. To this end, SafeMashups has the opportunity to boost enterprise mashup platforms.

More news to come in the following week. Stay tuned!

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

ICS Startup SafeMashups Inc. Entry into RSA

Folks from the Institute for Cyber Security will be attending the RSA Conference next week, showcasing the  ICS's Incubation program in particular and SafeMashups, the first and most mature startup in incubation, in specific. The SafeMashups entry was nominated as a finalist in this year's "Most Innovative Company at RSA® Conference 2009"! Only ten out of a couple hundred entries made it to the final round, and both the staff at ICS and SafeMashups are very excited.

Part of the submission included a thirty-second video explaining at a high level the MashSSL protocol, using OAuth as an example. The video is available on the SafeMashups YouTube channel. and in the the education center, on the SafeMashups site.

Enjoy!

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

ICS Startup SafeMashups Inc. a Finalist as Most Innovative Company at RSA Conference

For folks who are attending The RSA Conference is the likely the largest and most prestigious cyber security event of the year, the Institute for Cyber Security will be speaking Monday April 20th about ICS's Incubation program in particular and SafeMashups, the first and most mature startup in incubation, in specific.

As it turns out, this year RSA is holding an Innovation Sandbox Monday afternoon, showcasing this year's promising startups. Nearly two hundred entries were submitted as the "Most Innovative Company at RSA® Conference 2009", and of those, only ten were selected as a finalist, one of which was us!

Definitely swing by our booth and listen to our talk as we will cover how server-side and client-side mashup security currently works and how to use two-party protocols such as TLS in a multi-party environment.

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu

FBI Cryptanalysis Challenge

Last year, the FBI offered up a cryptanalysis challenge that gathered thousands of responses. They have released a new one today that is a little tougher.

The cryptanalysis challenge is neat, but the relevant links they include are just as worthwhile, They have an Analysis of Criminal Codes and Ciphers and a 400-year history of cryptanalysis that is definitely worth reading. There's even a "kid's version" of the cryptanalysis code!

Erhan J. Kartaltepe,
erhan.kartaltepe-at-utsa.edu