"NSA Mentors Next Generation of Cybersecurity Experts at Annual HackGT Hackathon"

A team from the National Security Agency (NSA) Georgia mentored and guided students through NSA-sponsored challenge problems at Georgia Tech's annual hackathon called HackGT. Hackathons are creative marathons where students interested in cybersecurity can learn and apply new skills, connect with others, and share their own ideas. The annual HackGT hackathon, one of the largest collegiate hackathons in the country, gathers some of the most creative and experienced student hackers from around the world. These young hackers demonstrate their creativity by working on individual or group projects and developing innovative solutions to problems posed by NSA and others. From October 21-23, students attended tech talks and workshops as well as received career advice directly from NSA employees who shared their backgrounds and paths to the Agency. Students were also given the opportunity to speak with the NSA team about how their diverse skills could help the NSA and the larger Intelligence Community mission in the future. In addition, subject matter experts were available to guide student participants through three NSA-sponsored problem challenges, delivering technical mentoring. James C. successfully completed the four NSA Codebreaker Challenge tasks available at HackGT 9. The OnePiece team won first place in an NSA-sponsored steganography problem, which required students to find and decipher a hidden message within a picture. The FastByte team won first place in an NSA-sponsored challenge aimed at locating the source of malicious data. This article continues to discuss this year's HackGT hackathon in which NSA mentored student participants and guided them through NSA-sponsored challenge problems.

NSA reports "NSA Mentors Next Generation of Cybersecurity Experts at Annual HackGT Hackathon"