Arcadia University Computer Science and Mathematics students Alexandr Chebatarev ’22, Käthe Specht ’22, Shane Leinbach ’21, and Nicholas McAndrew ’22 participated as a team in the National Cyber League competition in April, placing in the top 3 percent.

As a team, they came in second in the Silver Bracket and 29th in the overall competition, the best performance an Arcadia team has had in the competition since its start in Fall 2017.

“It was my first time ever participating in a computer science-related competition, and I am very glad I took the opportunity to put my skills to the test,” said Leinbach. “It pushed my critical thinking abilities to the limits to help solve challenges with my teammates.”

The team had to solve problems and adapt to challenges, such as identifying hackers from forensic data, pentesting and auditing vulnerable websites, recovering from ransomware attacks. Leinbach said one of the most challenging tasks they had to complete was accessing a hidden text file on a website.

“We were asked to access a hidden text file stored on a website and to do that we had to use a tool that allows us to exploit a flaw in the website,” said Leinbach. “I had no prior experience with the tool we used so I was watching [Chebatarev] share his screen in the Zoom call while using this tool. I copied his process and stumbled across the answer by making edits to the request that I thought would work.”