Battle of the bots: Cybersecurity club teaches cyber skills

The world is becoming more digital every day, and the personal and sensitive information of individuals and businesses is becoming easier to access online. Cybersecurity aims to ensure this private information stays private and is protected from cyberattacks. 

According to the International Identity Theft Annual Data Breach report, cyberattacks have increased by 72 % since 2021. Data compromises impacted roughly 350 million victims in 2023 alone.  

The Student Organization for Cybersecurity Club at USU was created to teach students hands-on skills and knowledge necessary to protect their information and provide real-world experience for careers in cybersecurity. 

Clara Koch, the 2024 president of the club, has been actively involved for over a year. Her goal as president is to attract more students so they can learn and understand the importance of cybersecurity and implement those skills into their lives and careers. 

“The purpose is to help students get hands-on experience with cybersecurity and gain those cybersecurity skills while still in school,” Koch said. “Our identities are just increasingly moving online, and we are teaching students to develop skills to be able to protect that sensitive information.” 

The club facilitates hands-on experience through competitions and events that encourage students to develop their cybersecurity skills, regardless of their experience. 

The club hosted an opening social on Aug. 28 and marketed it as a “no experience necessary” event, where they hacked into Battlebots.  

“We’ve made it so that even beginners could come and just kind of know what’s going on,” Koch said. “We’re going to make sure that it’s not super intimidating.” 

Students learned from the club members during the event, even if they didn’t have the knowledge required to participate. 

“We have two Battlebots, and they’re kind of like little robots on wheels,” Koch said. “Everybody will try to hack into the two Battlebots we have and race them across the finish line.” 

Teams of four participated, and prizes were awarded to the three teams who completed the race the fastest. 

Breyden Summers is the project manager for the Cybersecurity Club. He took the lead in programming the two Battlebots. 

“Each team will be able to log into the robot, perform a buffer overflow exploit, figure out how to automate it and race against each other,” Summers said.  

The process of performing a buffer overflow exploit gave students insight into how potential hackers can gain access to private information by completing this process, which is an essential cybersecurity skill.

The club provides many other opportunities for students to obtain real-world insight on various cybersecurity skills.  

“We do this by participating in competitions,” Koch said. “In CTF’s, or capture the flag competitions, it’s kind of like a bunch of mini challenges, and you get a certain number of points for hacking each challenge.” 

Brandin Rohde and Ben Hickenlooper work with their team during the Cybersecurity Club meeting.

These competitions are online and often last multiple days. Each competition is unique in its focus on certain cybersecurity skills, such as defense or cryptology. 

“They’re really good for that learning experience because it’s like a learning on-the-job kind of thing,” Summers said. “You’ll research, ‘How do I compromise this system?,’ or, ‘How do I decode this value?’ It really forces you to go out there and teach yourself how to do it.” 

The club holds weekly meetings where students can learn cybersecurity skills from their peers and from professionals. 

“In preparation for those competitions, we do skills nights, where one person who has a lot of knowledge in a particular area will teach that subject and kind of do a hands-on demo,” Koch said. “We also do other things like career development, where we’ll have professionals in the cybersecurity field come and speak to us on various subjects.”  

The hands-on skills learned from cybersecurity competitions and club meetings are vital sources of experience when it comes to building resumes and networking outside of the classroom. 

“It was really fun to do all the competitions and to gain these hands-on skills that we don’t really get in class,” Koch said. “You get more in the club than you do in the classes.” 

Koch said any student can learn something valuable by gaining a basic knowledge of cybersecurity. 

“Almost every human has personal data, like identification numbers, financial transactions, medical records — super sensitive information that’s stored in computers,” Koch said. “Cybersecurity is important because it’s not just a problem for large companies — it’s a human problem.