MassBay Students Place 1st at National Cyber League Competition

Computer Science Professor Shamsi Moussavi and MassBay student participants

WELLESLEY HILLS, MA (May 25, 2017) – MassBay Community College is pleased to announce a student cyber security team has placed 1st at the National Cyber League 2017 Postseason Championship Competition. The five member student team from MassBay, called the segfault, was ranked 1st out of 152 teams nationwide.

The student team participants include; Andrew Liberatore of Franklin, Chester Moses of Framingham, David Dew of Wellesley, Paul Buonopane of Medfield, and Timothy Ferguson of Marlborough.

The students have been working together every week since the beginning of the fall 2016 semester and have competed in the preseason, season and post season of the National Cyber League competition, placing 4th last semester. The competition is done online in a cloud based environment, where students compete to solve real problems. The MassBay team was given security challenges to solve and vulnerabilities to discover that replicate what they might face in the real world if they were in charge of securing an organization’s network. The team dissected the problems to find solutions, which included, decryption to view passwords, performing ethics hacking techniques, and analyzing information on the attack.

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“I am extremely proud of our students who participated in a team for the first time at this competition,” said MassBay Computer Science Professor Shamsi Moussavi. “Students diligently practiced, studied new tools and skills every week during both semesters of this academic year. They achieved 4th place in the Fall semester and sharpened their skills even more and reached the highest goal of being in 1st place this semester. They have definitely set a high bar for next year’s team.”

The NCL is a national competition, which students participate as individuals or on teams. For more information on the National Cyber League: http://www.nationalcyberleague.org/index.shtml

MassBay Community College was recently ranked by the Brookings Institution as one of the top schools for value added and earned salaries in the workforce. Ranked #1 for 2-year colleges in Massachusetts, #2 in New England and ranked #16 nationally. The College’s facilities in Wellesley Hills, Framingham and Ashland house day, evening and weekend classes that meet the needs of degree-seeking students and career minded life-long learners. Online options provide convenience and allow faculty to facilitate the learning process. Since its founding in 1961, MassBay has been accredited by several governing bodies and strives to meet the needs of the diverse local communities it serves.