CornCon is an annual cybersecurity conference held at the Davenport River Center. On October 9th, around 100 high school students from around the Quad City area, including 22 from PV, attended the event.
The event started off with an introduction, before moving into a competition. 20 teams of five members competed to solve cybersecurity puzzles, including data encryption and AI manipulation in something called a ‘capture the flag’ competition. Team members collaborated to solve these puzzles and win points for their team. PV’s most senior team won first place, earning certificates and CornCon merchandise.
Winning team leader and Cybersecurity Co-Captain senior Jack Cabay, who also placed first against all teams for individual contributions, reflected on his experience: “The competition was great. The capture the flag competition was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed some of the harder hacking questions.”
For many members, this was an entirely new experience, but for Cabay and his team, who had previously won the year prior, it was an opportunity to meet new people in the AP Computer Science class that may be interested in joining the more advanced Cybersecurity club.
Junior Himanshu Jangid was also on the winning team. He noted, “There were many challenges, but the ones I liked the most were the stenography ones. It was very rewarding to see the solution to the question hidden in the image.”
Stenography involves hiding data in an image, so while it appears to be unaltered, certain pixels contain hidden messages. This is Jangid’s third year of being involved with PV’s cybersecurity team and his fourth cybersecurity competition.
However, it wasn’t just fun and games. For about an hour, professionals in the field talked about their experience working in computer science and cybersecurity.
Senior Ronit Wade said, “I enjoyed the event, the speakers gave valuable information that I could apply to my future career.” Wade came to the event as a part of the AP Computer Science class field trip. The goal of the trip was to educate students on the many jobs involved in Information Technology (IT) and computer science that expands behind computer programming and engineering.
After the event, students walked around the expo where companies like BlackBerry Cybersecurity and Cybermaniacs talked about what their companies had to offer and gave out promotional freebies. Students also toured the ‘hacker villages’ where they experimented with lockpicking. Many began to consider cybersecurity as a future career during the competition, even if it wasn’t on their radar.
If you attended or are interested in cybersecurity, talk to Mr. Landa about getting involved in the cybersecurity club. Meetings start mid November on Wednesdays, 8th period.
