The SouthEast LinuxFest is a community run Linux and Open Source Software conference I run. It is the third largest of its kind in North America. It is FREE to attend, and will be at the Charlotte Blake Hotel in Uptown. And if you have some geek cred and UNCC pride, here is one of the talks we'll have:

Quote:Zachary Mayo – Systems Administrator, AMAC | Senior, UNC Charlotte | Vice-President, 49th Security Division (UNC Charlotte's Ethical Hacking Club) | Co-Captain, UNCC Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Team

PROTECT THIS HOUSE | UNCC Takes the Crown

This talk will cover accounts from UNC Charlotte's recent performance at the South-Eastern Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in Kennesaw, GA where they dominated 9 other schools taking away not only 1st Place, but Best in Defense and Best in Services as well. This win is a qualifier for the National CCDC competition taking place in San Antonio, TX just ten days after this presentation on April 21st.

Linux, specifically the Linux servers are a crucial part of the competition and must be constantly monitored and must be secured as best as we can without all the tools we would need.

Essentially, the competition is setup as 10 identical IT companies (one per school) who must maintain services that are already running. The computers, servers, and network are plagued with malware, misconfigured, contain physical security threats, and are wide-open to hackers as well. The team must reconfigure, patch, secure, and keep their network up while responding an overwhelming amount of business requests such as change control logs, changes in physical network components, adding/removing services, and much more. All of this while being attacked by a red team consisting of some of the best penetration testers in the world (Lares, SPAWAR, and U.S. Army USCOM). Scoring is based on three categories: Business requests/injection performance, defense from red team, and service uptime.

The team is comprised of 8 individuals from the 49th Security Division, UNC Charlotte's ethical hacking and computer security club--also a 2012 nominee of Student Organization of the Year. Talk will include complete overview of the competition, including challenges they faced maintaining services while being attacked by a world-class red-team, exploits used against them, mitigation/recovery, and what it takes to be a successful collegiate computer security team, and how to use Linux to leverage a team to a winning victory. Talk will feature Zachary Mayo (Vice-President, 49SD; Co-Captain CCDC team) and Luke Snyder (Linux Admin, CCDC team, 49SD member.

Register to attend (free): http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org

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