A Pineville student was among three Northwestern State University Computer Information Systems students who, along with a CIS professor, participated in one of the largest hacking conferences in the world earlier this month.
Brady Benoit of Pineville attended DEF CON 34 in Las Vegas with Dr. Jason Powell, Seth Thurman of Homer and recent graduate Justin Dysarz of Sugarland, Texas. The group attended talks and took part in Capture the Flag competitions alongside thousands of security researchers and hobbyists from around the globe.
“DEF CON is organized around dozens of specialized ‘villages,’ each built around a different corner of the security world, from the AI Village and Car Hacking Village to the Cloud Village and Hardware Hacking and Soldering Skills Village,” Powell said.
The group’s favorite stop was the OS Community, a village dedicated to operating system research, low-level hacking and open-source projects.
“The sessions there gave the students a deeper understanding of how operating systems are built, knowledge they plan to use directly this coming academic year as they begin building their own Linux distribution,” Powell said.
The group also spent time at the Packet Hacking Village, home to the Wall of Sheep. There, they practiced packet analysis, learning to intercept and decode network traffic and seeing firsthand why unencrypted connections leave passwords and other sensitive data exposed.
“Across every village, the group came away with the same broader lesson: real strength in cybersecurity comes from understanding both software and hardware, no matter which side of a competition a person is playing,” Powell said. “The sharpest competitors were the ones comfortable moving between code and circuitry.”
Powell said the group hopes their experience encourages more CIS classmates to explore both application development and cybersecurity coursework, rather than treating the two as separate tracks. They argue the areas reinforce each other in exactly the way DEF CON’s villages are built to demonstrate.
The group did not return with photos of their experience. Powell said DEF CON maintains a strict, consent-based photography and filming policy that limits when attendees can be photographed, particularly around the Capture the Flag areas.
“With CTF competitions in mind and a Linux distribution project ahead, Powell said students are already talking about returning to DEF CON next year.
Information on Northwestern State University’s Computer Information Systems program is available through the university.