DNHS Students Head to CyberPatriot XIII National Finals

Photo Courtesy of Tanay Shah

Lily Wu is the Features Editor for The Talon. Her…

Two CyberAegis teams from Del Norte High School placed first and second in the open division for high school students of the CyberPatriot XIII round 3 competition, advancing to the national finals. In first place is CyberAegis Cobalt, and second place CyberAegis Nobelium.

“Everyone from my team is super excited about our performance,” said captain Tanay Shah (’22) of CyberAegis Cobalt, “Most of us have been competing for over three years so it’s really nice to see all that preparation and knowledge be linked to the number one spot.”

CyberPatriot is a cybersecurity competition for middle school and high school students. They compete in their respective divisions to find cybersecurity flaws and secure Windows and Linux systems as well as complete a networking challenge. DNHS competitors compete under CyberAegis, a local organization where students teach each other cybersecurity lessons and prepare for CyberPatriot and other cybersecurity competitions.

Students in CyberAegis have taken part in CyberPatriot for many years, claiming an increasing number of top places each year.

In addition to the teams who took the top two places in the open division of Round 3, five more DNHS teams from CyberAegis placed in the top eight, and in total ten DNHS teams scored in the top one percent among 2,504 participating teams.

“In line with our team’s past performance, this year’s performance was truly outstanding,” said CyberAegis coach Paul Johnson, “We have very sharp, determined, and competitive students putting in many hours and this has led to an amazing performance once again. Our strength remains in students collectively working together to build a formidable team, what I like to think of as a hive mind.”

Due to the new rules the Air Force Association added this year, only two teams from the same organization or coach are eligible to go to the open division national finals. In previous years, the top twelve teams in the semifinals (known as Round 3 this year) could participate in the national finals, regardless of their affiliation. If the rule had remained the same, seven DNHS teams from CyberAegis would have been able to participate in the nationals. Under the new rules, the five teams who ranked from third to eight ended their competition season early.

When asked how he felt about AFA’s new regulations, Coach Paul Johnson responded, “In some sense, it is a little humbling that the organizers, the Air Force Association added a special rule because we were completely dominating the competition leaving little oxygen for other teams at the national level. Naturally, this is disappointing, however historically the AFA has emphasized diversifying the competition geographically, so it’s not surprising.”

”We will have schools from every corner of the nation competing for the number 1 spot,” said Shah, “and this year’s regional diversity is something we look forward to. In the past, we were mainly competing against our own teams and knew what to expect but this year’s diversity introduces unknowns we are excited for.”