The National Security Agency invites undergraduate and graduate students to join this year’s edition of an annual cybersecurity competition. The 2019 Codebreaker Challenge would allow participants to showcase software reverse-engineering, blockchain analysis and other cyber skills in scenarios that resemble real-world cyber terrorism, NSA said Friday.
Participating students would work to reverse-engineer and exploit TerrorTime, an Android messaging app that the challenge’s fictional terrorists use to communicate. Efforts under the challenge would aim to spoof and decrypt messages and enable user masquerades within the app. The challenge is ongoing and will continue to run through Jan. 10, 2020.
“The Codebreaker Challenge closely mirrors the real world scenarios we deal with every day at NSA,†said Eric Bryant, the challenge’s creator. “It gives students the opportunity to test their knowledge, build new skills and develop experience in areas typically not covered by course curricula in cybersecurity,” he added.
