CDL talk 4/9/21:  MeetingMayhem:  Teaching Adversarial Thinking through a Web-Based Game
Channel: UCYBR - UMBC Center for Cybersecurity
Date: 12/04/2021

We present our progress and plans in developing MeetingMayhem, a new web-based educational exercise that helps students learn adversarial thinking in communication networks. The goal of the exercise is to arrange a meeting time and place by sending and receiving messages through an insecure network that is under the control of a malicious adversary.  Players can assume the role of participants or an adversary.  The adversary can disrupt the efforts of the participants by intercepting, modifying, blocking, replaying, and injecting messages.  Through this engaging authentic challenge, students learn the dangers of the network, and in particular, the Dolev-Yao network intruder model. They also learn the value and subtleties of using cryptography (including encryption, digital signatures, and hashing), and protocols to mitigate these dangers.  Our team is developing the exercise in spring 2021 and will evaluate its educational effectiveness.

Akriti Anand (akritia1@umbc.edu) is an MS student in computer science working with Alan Sherman.  She is the lead software engineer and focuses on the web frontend. Richard Baldwin (richardbaldwin@umbc.edu) is a BS student in computer science, a member of Cyberdawgs, and lab manager for the Cyber Defense Lab. Sudha Kosuri (skosuri1@umbc.edu) is a MS student in computer science.  She is working on the frontend (using React and Flask) and its integration with the backend. Julie Nau (jnau1@umbc.edu) is a BS student in computer science.  She is working on the backend and on visualizations. Ryan Wunk-Fink (wnukry1@umbc.edu) is a PhD student in computer science working with Alan Sherman. He is developing the backend.