Red Team Rocks the House
By: Donald Bachmann
Tags: Cybersecurity, Penetration Testing, Kali Linux, Web Application Security

Today is the last day of the Cyber Defenders Program 2018. Yesterday we had a chance to present an entire month’s worth of work in front of cyber security experts, professors, and family. It was really important in retrospect to how we had put forth so much effort in the midst of obstacles forced to overcome. Rapunzel faced many challenges in terms of teamwork, coordination and working with new technologies. Nervousness frustration or lack there of, all of us at Rapunzel experienced our final presentation from a different perspective.

Yesterday the pressure was on, all of us scrambled as we put together our centerfold. it was like a mental track meet all morning as we sanded down all the edges and all corners of a final project with the finish line around the corner.

With so much information so little time we struggled to peel off all the unnecessary instances of remarks and intuitive interpretations. Some of us lost in a dream finding our way through frustration digging deep inside for things like motivation became second nature.

One of the significant instances that moved us the most about yesterday’s experience was listening to our mentors Nick and Johnsy talk about all the different things that they built in the Cyber Defenders curriculum.

Wasn’t until then that most of us realize how much work they had done in such little time. It wasn’t until the last final moments that Rapunzel saw our final project unfold into an amazing array of brilliance. One can never really see the final project and its entirety until you actually cross that bridge.

Donnie first started out with his introduction which was a summary of ethical hacking and Rapunzel’s red team attack Vector Focus. Following Donnie was Dilara who spoke about the Kali Linux USB that Rapunzel had created. She actually went into detail which sounded as if she was giving a glamorous speech. Following Dilara was Jeff who talked a little bit about the OWASP top 10. Jeff went to work giving detail about the documentation included on the Rapunzel Kali Linux USB. Following Jeff was Manny who started off with a brief mention about the teams blogs, and painted a picture of Rapunzel’s story and their desire to spread the message of cyber security. Following that Manny did a demonstration on misconfiguration where he was able to demonstrate to the audience a live example of the consequences of not setting up a server or web application correctly.

Web applications that are not set up correctly allows a hacker to see any information that is sent across the network because it is sent in plain text format. The takeaway from his example was that everything on a website should be encrypted when it is sent over the network or else the information can be compromised easily.

Any Last Words

For all four of us, it was a brand new experience working as a team to create a product and present it to the audience within a short span of time. This program taught us many new perspectives of cyber security, but most importantly for the first time Rapunzel really experienced the fieldwork faced head on in cyber security; we had to dig deep within for the inner strength associated with work as a team, learn how to use tools, make extensive research, and create the best product.

Because we had different kinds of skills and interests, we had to combine all these skills and interest into one project. It was a big challenge but we got through all the challenges with the help of our mentors. Rapunzel would like to thank everyone that has blessed us with their inspiration and help throughout the Cyber Defenders program of 2018.