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How CyberPatriot Works

CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, run by the Air & Space Forces Association. Teams of middle and high school students are given virtual machines full of security problems and score points by finding and fixing them.

It is a defense competition. Offensive activity against other teams or the scoring system is against the rules.

Who is on a team

Role Who What they do
Competitors Students in grades 6 through 12, 2 to 6 per team Do all the work during a round. No prior experience required.
Coach A teacher, parent, or youth group leader Registers the team, handles logistics, responsible for team safety.
Technical mentor A volunteer who knows Windows, Linux, and networking Teaches and answers questions between rounds. Must pass a background check. Cannot help during a round.
Team assistant A non-technical volunteer Helps with paperwork and scheduling. Must pass a background check.

What a round looks like

Each round, your team downloads one or more competition images. An image is a virtual machine (VM) that has been deliberately broken: weak passwords, unauthorized users, missing updates, bad firewall settings, malware, and so on. Your job is to harden it as completely as you can in the time allowed.

Images come in a few flavors: Windows 11, Windows Server, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. Rounds also include a Cisco networking quiz and a Packet Tracer exercise.

The sequence during a round:

  1. Extract the image using the password from the StartEx email.
  2. Open the image, enter your team's unique ID.
  3. Read the README file on the desktop. It has the scenario, a list of authorized users, and hints.
  4. Find and fix vulnerabilities. Answer the forensics questions.
  5. Complete the Cisco quiz and Packet Tracer challenge.

Note

Not everything that scores is hinted at in the README. The README tells you what the "company" needs; it does not list every problem.

Scoring

The CyberPatriot Competition System (CCS) runs inside each image and reports your progress to the scoring server. Open the CyberPatriot Scoring Report shortcut on the desktop to see your score and connection status. You hear a chime when you gain points and a buzzer when you lose them.

You can lose points. Removing a required service, deleting an authorized user, or breaking something the scenario needs will cost you.

Danger

Never open, modify, or delete anything in the CyberPatriot folder on an image. That is the scoring engine. Damaging it can wipe your progress.

Server time is official time. All work has to be finished inside the four-hour window.

Round schedule

The Monday before a round, coaches get a download email with software and image links, plus Cisco quiz details. The StartEx email with the extraction password arrives Thursday at 9:00 AM Eastern.

Teams pick any four-hour block inside these windows (all Eastern time):

Day Window
Thursday 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM
Friday 9:00 AM to 11:59 PM
Saturday 8:00 AM to 11:59 PM
Sunday 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM

Oklahoma is one hour behind, so Thursday's window starts at 8:00 AM Central.

Preparing before a round

  • Read the challenge description for the round on the CyberPatriot site.
  • Work through the training images and Cisco NetAcad assignments.
  • Compete in the unscored rounds: the Exhibition round, the Training rounds (these come with answer keys), and the Practice round.
  • Make sure your machines meet the hardware and software specs published on the CyberPatriot site. Virtualization extensions (VT-x or AMD-V) must be turned on in the BIOS.
  • Download images as soon as links arrive and verify the checksums.

Season timeline

The season runs from fall through spring: Exhibition and Practice rounds, then Round 1, Round 2, the State round, the Semifinals, and the National Finals. Only teams that qualify move on at each stage.

The National Finals are an all-expenses-paid trip to the Washington, D.C. area. Finalists compete in the Network Security Master Challenge, the Cisco Networking Challenge, and others, and can win scholarships.

Resources

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Working with Competition Images