11th Texas Security Awareness Week
Friday and Saturday, April 22nd-23rd, 2022
Organized by
We are excited to offer our 11th Texas Security Awareness Week (TexSAW 2022) event.
We concluded this year’s event!
Click here for the photo album.
Winners of this year’s competition:
1st place: Roman Hauksson-Neill and Jay Challangi, UT Dallas
2nd place: Brandon Wang, UT Dallas
3rd place: William Chang and Chia-Hao Yang, UT Dallas
This year’s event will again target students who are interested in pursuing computer security. Students will be exposed to security concepts which will expand their knowledge of cyber security and broaden their career opportunities.
Students will have the opportunity to:
- Meet students interested in cyber security from UT Dallas as well as other universities and colleges in Texas.
- Hear a guest presentation by a UT Dallas alumnus and leading cyber security expert from Sandia National Labs.
- Attend workshops on Friday, April 22nd, to develop fundamental hands-on skills in the cyber security topics of web security, reverse engineering and system security, and digital forensics.
- Put newly-learned skills to use in a cyber security competition on Saturday, April 23rd. Graduate students are welcome to compete in the competition but they will not qualify for prizes.
A registration fee of $10 is required which will be refunded upon confirmation of attendance at the two day event.
Accommodation grants (a limited number based on double occupancy) are available for students coming from outside the DFW Metroplex area.
Applicants must have a current GPA of at least 2.7 and be enrolled in a computer science, MIS, IT, or other related program. Please apply with a copy of your current unofficial transcript and a personal statement on the expected benefits of attending these events by filling this form by April 6th. Please include your gender as well as any specific roommate request.
Program Schedule for TexSAW 2022
Hardware/Software Requirements
We have prepared a Kali Linux VM that includes all the software tools that you will need to participate in the workshops and in the competition. Please download this VM image from here and install it on your laptop using a hypervisor (e.g., VirtualBox or VMware hypervisor).
Below are the instructions to importing the OVA File into VirtualBox:
- Download and install VirtualBox if you don’t have it already.
- Open VirtualBox and select File > Import Appliance…
- Now, select your OVA file in the import box and verify the settings in the center window.
- Ensure the MAC Address Policy is Include only NAT network adapter MAC addresses.
- Click Import at the bottom.
- Allow VirtualBox to import the file and then configure it for use.
- If you have black screen issues after powering on the VM, you may need to dedicate more video memory in Settings > Display > Screen > Video Memory
- If you are still having black screen issues after powering on the VM, you may need to change the version to 64-bit in Settings > General > Basic > Version > Other/Unknown (64-bit).
Please download AND import the OVA file before coming to the event. It is a large file and takes a long time to download and import.
Schedule on April 22, 2022
| 8:30am – 9:00am | Breakfast |
| 9:00am – 10:30am | System Security and Reverse Engineering Workshop Alexander Armstrong, Payton Harmon, Elliot Tarbet, and Corey Wingo |
| 10:30am – 10:45am | Break |
| 10:45am – 12:15pm | Digital Forensics Workshop Tahlla Taylor, James Wrabel, and Mason Orsak |
| 12:15pm – 1:00pm | Lunch |
| 1:00pm – 2:00pm | Guest Speaker Kevin Hulin, Sandia National Laboratories |
| 2:00pm – 3:30pm | Web Security Workshop Charles Averill, Harrison Hamrick, Tri Nguyen, and Benjamin Stark |
Schedule on April 23, 2022
| 9:00am – 9:30am | Breakfast |
| 9:30am – 12:30pm | CTF competition |
| 12:30pm – 1:15pm | Lunch |
| 1:15pm – 2:00pm | Presentation of Solutions |
| 2:00pm – 2:30pm | Award ceremony and student feedback |
For more information, please email Rhonda Walls.
Venue
Located in the center of one of the most dynamic economic and demographic regions of the nation, The University of Texas at Dallas, is a young, dynamic research institution on the cutting edge of science, technology, medicine, business and the arts. Born at the dawn of the information age, UT Dallas helped pioneer new fields in science and technology and created sought-after degree programs that did not exist a generation ago. In recent years, the University’s teaching mission has expanded, its external research funding has nearly doubled, its program offerings have grown and its reputation has gained notice nationally. The student body has also grown, even as quantitative markers of excellence – average entering SAT scores, graduation rates, numbers of distinguished scholarship holders and national merit scholarship winners – have moved up.
Student workshops and competition will take place in the TI Auditorium located in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science (ECSS).