The staff in Stevenson University’s Cyber Forensics program is working with the programs at approximately 50 other colleges and universities in launching The Black T-Shirt Cyber Forensics Challenge, which is a joint academic and industry contest designed to promote interest in digital forensics, foster relationships among academic institutions, develop relationships between academia and the corporate sector, and provide a valuable hands-on exercise for learning and training.

We are looking for teams of students between 1-3 members to enter the challenge. There is no cost and this would be a great way to raise awareness of your skills and the Top Secret Colonials. We are permitted to have multiple teams but the teams are NOT permitted to work together. The annual challenge, which has already been built for this year, will run from January 1, 2016 to April 1, 2016. Challengers can register at any time in that window; once registered, links will be provided to download the data. Submissions will be due on April 1. The results will be scored in the month of April 2016.

Tools will not be provided but you can use FTK, the Password Recovery Toolkit, Splunk, DEFT, Autopsy, etc. to analyze the images. Teams are permitted to use whatever tools and methods they choose but they must be available and able to be recreated by the judges. Each member will receive a Black Cyber Forensics Challenge t-shirt.

This year’s contest involves confirming allegations of an exfiltration of company information by analyzing two computer images and network traffic. Point structure hasn’t been released yet. In addition to the main challenge, “Mini” Challenges” will be run throughout the year. These are similar to the annual challenge but smaller. The fall challenge for next year involves an executive returning from a business trip to find that there were very strange charges on her phone bill that she did not make.

More details can be found online at http://cyberforensicschallenge.com. Please email Dr. Paullet (paullet@rmu.edu) immediately so we can start forming teams.