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Five Squadron Cadets Working Through CyberStart Game

August 4, 2020

The CyberStart game is a cyber security training tool for young adults. This tool is full of challenges that test the student’s persistence and research abilities when facing authentic cyber security tasks. Players become an agent for the virtual Cyber Protection Agency, where they embark on stopping criminal gangs who are using their cyber skills to do damage online. Agents must use various defensive tactics to thwart these cyber criminals’ attempts. The rich narrative, highly designed challenges and user-centric progress system, is designed to enable a student to work through the challenges at their own pace.

Our squadron Aerospace Officer, 2d Lt Roger Ball, applied for the game licenses from AFJROTC. The cadets proceed through the game at their own pace solving problems and learning about computers and security. Cadets  C/CMSgt Brewer, C/1st Lt Urquiola, C/TSgt Wilson, C/2d Lt Janicki and Cadet Fernandez are participating in the game.

Cadet C/1st Lt Urquiola had this to say about the game. “The cyber patriot games are very unique. They present a few challenges in terms of being able to find answers to problems, but they aren't too hard. You learn a lot of different, interesting things such as code breaking even python. Each challenge is unique, and is very fun to decipher. I think this is a great learning experience for those who are interested in computers”

Cadet  C/CMSgt Brewer said, “I’ve learned many new things on Cyber Game and looking forward to learning many more. It’s very challenging. One thing I learned that I found interesting was ASCII, the code representing 128 English characters as numbers that translates computer text to human text.”

C/2d Lt Janicki commented, “So far I have really enjoyed participating in the CyberStart game activities. The very early levels were great for getting familiar with the concepts - like figuring out different ciphers, learning Python basics - and now the levels I'm on are putting it all together with more challenging challenges (!). I love the game/puzzle-type aspect to the challenges. It's exciting to know that the information we're trying to find is there, just hidden - and I have the tools to find it! I just got my VM set up to do the Forensics base (I had to do some changing of my computer's BIOS settings) so now I'll be jumping into a Linux OS for a bit! If other cadets are having trouble with getting the VM to run, I may be able to help - I recently finished the GLR Cybersecurity Academy NCSA and we worked on virtual machines quite a bit there!”

Cadet C/TSgt Wilson reported, “I’ve been working through the simulated cyber ‘missions’ for about 2.5 weeks and I am enjoying learning more about cyber-security and different aspects of hacking. The courses build upon one another and require you to think critically and recall previous knowledge to complete various tasks. The tasks can differ from finding a hidden file on a website to navigating a Linux terminal with python. What begins as basic problem solving and common sense soon progresses into more difficult programming and intricate troubleshooting. Because of the way the lessons are designed to teach through practical examples, all of the ‘work’ you have to do seems very productive and doable. While there are some lessons which take longer than others, and some can take a lot of time to figure out, the overall experience is pleasant and worthwhile.”

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