Members of the Cal Poly Security Education Club made their way to San Francisco for the 2023 BSidesSF security conference, an event that brings together security professionals, corporate representatives and students to share in the world of cybersecurity.
“While there, we were able to attend technical lectures by industry professionals, network with hiring and corporate representatives and get hands on during interactive workshops,” said club member Tian Wong.
The postgraduate computer science student led the Cal Poly group at this year’s conference, where they took part in a cloud security “capture the flag” competition.
“The challenges involved abusing intentionally vulnerable Amazon AWS deployments to extract sensitive information,” Wong explained. “These ‘hacking’ challenges are a staple of our club, as we meet weekly to participate in similar challenges hosted globally.”
Their consistent practice paid off – the club placed 2nd in the security capture-the-flag competition and even won a Nintendo Switch for the club lab as an extra reward.
Along with hacking challenges, BSidesSF connects students to the greater cybersecurity community.
“The thing I am most happy about is the exposure this experience provided to the students we were able to bring with us,” Wong shared. “My hope is that this experience was able to bring down mental barriers and allow the students to see a future for themselves in the industry.”
By Taylor Villanueva
