Raytheon visits Western, tests students' hacking skills

As electronic music played from speakers and the smell of Chinese food lingered in the air, 16 Western students from the computer science and engineering technology majors worked in teams of two in a casual competition on Feb. 17, hosted by representatives from Raytheon, a company specializing in technology security.

“We are here looking at what Western has to offer as far as potential recruits,” said Christopher Stricklan, a reverse engineer for Raytheon. “We are looking for intelligent people to try new things and think outside the box.”

The competition is called capture the flag; in the game, competitors earn points by overcoming challenges in various categories with multiple levels of difficulty.

“Capture the flag is typical in [hacking] competitions and tryouts,” said Matthew Buonadonna, a Western alumnus and Raytheon reverse engineer.

The events are a way for the students to take what they know and use it to build a résumé or portfolio they can bring to Raytheon or other companies when they finish school, Buonadonna said.

Hacking events like this one allow competitors to find technological vulnerabilities in a product.

“I think it’s cool because [we] literally get to figure out and break stuff,” said senior and computer science major Jeremy Caci, a participant in the capture the flag game. “We try to find the vulnerabilities before the ‘bad guys’ do.”

The discoveries from the competitions are then used to repair any weaknesses in the programs, Stricklan said.

Raytheon’s visit comes after the second place performance by Western’s computer science team in the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition last year and an invite from the team members.