As National Cyber Security Awareness Month draws to a close, we thought we would treat you to some news on Batman’s Kitchen, UW’s frightfully good team of undergraduate hacking heroes who are preparing once again to battle the virtual bad guys. The team — CSE’s Alex Kirchhoff and Bo Wang, Dan Arens of Atmospheric Sciences, and Stanley Hsieh of Physics — will compete in the finals of the Capture the Flag competition hosted by New York University next month.
CTF is the flagship event of the Cyber Security Awareness Week conference (CSAW ’16), the largest student-run cybersecurity event in the nation. Batman’s Kitchen joins 14 other university teams at the U.S. finals, where they will compete onsite November 10-12 simultaneously with students from around the world gathered at NYU Abu Dhabi and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. The members of Batman’s Kitchen and their fellow finalists bested a pool of more than 2,000 teams from 109 countries for a chance to compete for the big prize—not to mention some serious cybersecurity bragging rights.
This is the second year in a row that the UW team, which is advised by CSE staffer Melody Kadenko and is currently ranked among the top one percent of CTF teams in the world, has progressed to the finals of CSAW. Based on their achievements to date, it is clear that the members of Batman’s Kitchen have a few tricks up their sleeves.
Good luck at the finals, Alex, Bo, Dan and Stanley!