USNA Wins Annual NSA Cyber Defense Exercise

Congratulations to the Naval Academy's Cyber Security Team for winning this year's annual Service Academy Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX), hosted by the NSA!

Cyber Security Team Members:
MIDN 1/C Lucas Foppe (Captain)
MIDN 1/C  Jordan Wilhelm
MIDN 1/C Danny Flack
MIDN 1/C Dennis Devey
MIDN 2/C John Trezza
MIDN 2/C Lamont Brown
MIDN 2/C Peter Hodapp
MIDN 3/C Anthony Dohse
MIDN 3/C Brandon Sipes
MIDN 3/C Doug Alpuche
MIDN 3/C Kristina Bodeman
MIDN 3/C Sam Teplov
MIDN 3/C Trent Meekin
MIDN 4/C Caroline Sears
MIDN 4/C Kevin Nguyen

The annual Service Academy CDX began in 2001 and is designed to sharpen the skills of the next generation of cyber warriors by having them work against NSA experts. USNA last won the event in 2015.

The Service Academy Cyber Defense Exercise trophy will
return to USNA this year. USNA last held the trophy the CDX in 2015.

For the past several months leading up to the event, these 15 midshipmen and their counterparts from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Merchant Marine Academy, Military Academy, and the Royal Military College of Canada have been preparing for the live competition by building and securing their own networks. During last week's competition, experts from NSA attacked each team's networks, while they attempted to detect and recover from those intrusions and attacks.

The USNA CDX victory comes with annual “cyber bragging rights” among the service academies and alumni in the cyber world where this event is recognized for its significance and difficulty, but also comes with an trophy (pictured above), which will return to Annapolis in the near future for a formal presentation.