News
Dec. 5: International Visit
The Center for Cybersecurity hosted an international delegation from Palestine, in collaboration with World Chicago and the US Department of State. The discussion included possible technical collaboration in cybersecurity events, educational and training opportunities, and an overview of the research activities of the Center for Cybersecurity.
Nov 26: NCL Fall 2024 Power Rankings
Loyola University Chicago ranked 40th in the National Cyber League (NCL) Fall 2024 power rankings. Well done to all the students who participated! Loyola's best team, consisting of Sloan Luckie, Laila Hamdan, Hesam Sadeghian, Christian Vasquez, Aslihan Aldintal, Luke Niemeyer, and Gulnaz Zholshy, scored 2,685 points out of 3,100 and ranked 35th out of 532 teams. In the Individual Game, our top students, Josh Honig, Nathan Ferrell, and Aslihan Altindal scored 2,730, 2,565, and 2,410 points respectively.
Nov 25: CS Seminar
Great presentation on 11/22 by our faculty Dr. Moreira, and students Mr. Honig and Mr. Ferrell on source attribution and web privacy.
Nov 21: SCiP Presentation
Graduate student Arrianna Szymczak presented a talk on "User Personality, User-Generated Password and Similarity to Other Users" at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Computation in Psychology (SCIP) on November 21 in New York City. This research is a collaborative work with Oklahoma State University and included both undergraduate and graduate students Anna Bakas, William Mack, Anne Wagner, and Robert Bitunjac. Work is funded by the NSF DGE 1918591 and 1919004.
Nov 23: WiCyS/7968/MIT TechFusion Gala
The WiCyS (Women in Cybersecurity) student chapter, the 7968 cybersecurity competitions club, and the Minorities in Tech (MIT) co-hosted a TechFusion Gala on Friday November 22, 2024. The Gala was also a fundraising event, raising some funds for ChiArts. Thank you to all who participated!
Nov 19: CS Seminar
Thank you to SPR and CTO Matthew Mead for giving a talk during our Fall 2024 Computer Science Seminar!
Nov 15: WiCyS/7968 Murder Mystery Event
The WiCyS (Women in Cybersecurity) student chapter and 7968 cybersecurity competitions club co-hosted a murder mystery Capture the Flag competition on Friday November 15, 2024.
Nov 15: FBI Visit
Thank you to the Special Agents from the FBI who came to talk to our students on November 15. We had a room packed with almost 50 students! The visit included a recruitment talk about both the special agents route and the professional staff route, along with what kind of cybersecurity work the FBI is doing.
Nov 13: DoE Cyberforce Competition
Loyola participated in the annual Department of Energy Cyberforce competition in St. Charles, Illinois on November 8-9, 2024. A team consisting of captain Josh Honig, Chloe Kilroy, Lynette Lim, Daniel Gaevskiy, Nathan Ferrell, and Sophia Homan, defended their smart city against a professional red team while ensuring that services were up and that the website was fully functional. Throughout the competition, the team also solved various anomalies. The team coach was Dr. Eric Chan-Tin. Loyola ranked 14th out of 94 teams at the competition. Go Ramblers!
Nov 11: CS Seminar Fall Series 2024
Great conversation at the 11/08 CS Seminar with two excellent speakers: Paul Edlund from Microsoft and Satyaki Sikdar from Loyola University Chicago. Paul discussed a range of topics from cybersecurity to AI to crypto to passwords while Satyaki showed us how everything is connected in a network!
Nov 6: Congrats to Kelly McCabe
Congratulations to Kelly McCabe, a senior in cybersecurity, for being awarded the prestigious President's Medallion! Kelly is expected to graduate in May 2025. From Kelly: "“God’s strength and hard work have driven me to succeed.”
Nov 1: CS Seminar
Dr. Sang-Yoon Chang from the University of Colorado - Colorado Spring and Mr. Kevin Woghiren from United Airlines gave two entertaining talks on cybersecurity of mobile networking, blockchain, and the aviation industry.
Oct 30: ACM Senior Member
Congratulations to Dr. Eric Chan-Tin for being recognized as an ACM Senior Member in 2024. From the ACM website, "The Senior Members Grade recognizes those ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience and at least 5 years of Professional Membership in the last 10 years, who have demonstrated performance through technical leadership, and technical or professional contributions."
Oct 29: UND Cyberhawks Final
Two teams from Loyola participated in the UND Cyberhawks final competition on October 29. Pictured are Nathan Ferrell and Christian Vasquez. The other team consisted of Daniel Gaevskiy, Lynette Lim, Chloe Kilroy, and Josh Honig.
Oct 23: WiCyS Career Talk Event
On October 23, Loyola WiCyS student chapter hosted a career talk event, with two speakers: Claudia Holtsclaw from Motorola Solutions and Katherine Quinn from Northern Trust.
Oct 22: Hivestorm competition
Loyola University Chicago participated in the 2024 Hivestorm competition, ranking 62nd out of 413 teams. The team consisted of Josh Honig (captain), Laila Hamdan, Nathan Ferrell, and Sophia Homan. Go Ramblers!
Oct 16: WiCyS Career Building Event
On October 16, Loyola WiCyS student chapter hosted a career building event with speakers from Accenture.
Oct 16: 2024-2025 Motorola Solutions Foundation Scholarship
Congrats to Alexis Fenderson, Bridget Gorman, Kelly McCabe, Nancy Rojas, Nika Primus, and Sloan Luckie for being selected as the 2024-2025 Motorola Solutions Foundation Cybersecurity Experiential Scholars! This program, led by Dr. Eric Chan-Tin, introduces students to hands-on cybersecurity practice, such as national cybersecurity competitions. This program is made possible by a generous grant from Motorola Solutions Foundation. #MotoSolutionsCares
Oct 4: CISA Visit
A couple of CISA cybersecurity advisors came to talk to our students and scholars about working at CISA.
Sep 27: UND Cyberhawks
Congratulations to Christian Vasquez, Nathan Ferrell, Chloe Kilroy, Lynette Lim, Daniel Gaevskiy, and Josh Honig for competing at the 2024 UND Cyberhawks qualifiers competitions!
All three Loyola teams made it to the finals, ranking 8th, 15th, and 17th on the university rankings scoreboard. The finals for the competition is on Monday October 28, 2024! Go Ramblers!
Engaged Scholars Faculty Fellow
Congratulations to Dr. Eric Chan-Tin. He is recognized as a 2024-2026 Engaged Scholarship Faculty Fellow by the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS) at Loyola University Chicago. As part of the fellowship, Dr. Chan-Tin will work on engaging students to participate in cybersecurity competitions.
Presentation at Blue Team Con!
Josh Honig and Nathan Ferrell presented a talk "Website Fingerprinting: Predicting User Behavior Based on Encrypted Metadata Using Machine Learning" at Blue Team Con on September 8, 2024.
CyberRamblers: New Cohort!
The new 2024-2026 cohort of the CyberRamblers CyberCorps Scholarship for Service has been selected.
Congratulations to Chloe Kilroy, Lynette Lim, and Daniel Gaevskiy!
If you are interested in applying, please check the website at https://cyberramblers.cs.luc.edu.
Aug. 26, 2024: Welcome to the new Academic Year!
Welcome to the new academic year!
Here are some useful tips to start the new year strong!
- Stay tuned to announcements from the Sakai page - this includes cybersecurity meetups, scholarships, competitions, and other events
- Join a club such as Don't Panic!, Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) Loyola chapter, and 7968 cybersecurity competitions club
Paper at ACISP 2024
Madeline Moran (pictured) presented an interdisciplinary research paper from Computer Science, Psychology, and Criminal Justice & Criminology, titled "Deep Dive on Relationship between Personality and Password Creation" at the 29th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP) in Sydney, Australia. This is joint worked between Loyola University Chicago and Oklahoma State University.
Authors are Madeline Moran, Arrianna Szymczak, Anna Hart, Shelia Kennison, Eric Chan-Tin
LUC Students at INSuRE+E Summer 2024
Nathan Ferrell and Arrianna Szymczak participated in the INSuRE+E program at Iowa State University during Summer 2024.
For more information, see this LinkedIn Post
New NSF Award!
The CS Department Chair, Dr. George K. Thiruvathukal, has received an EAGER award from the National Science Foundation’s Clean Energy Technology initiative. The project is a collaboration with Dr. Jamie Davis and Dr. Yung-Hsiang Lu at Purdue University and Dr. Konstantin Läufer at Loyola University Chicago aims to tackle a pressing issue: the growing energy consumption of data centers.
Data centers currently consume about 2% of the U.S.'s energy, and this number is set to rise. The goal is simple but ambitious: make data centers–and the software running on them--more energy-efficient. The project leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to optimize software energy use. By optimizing software to use less energy, there could be a cut down on the overall energy footprint of data centers.
The project is also focused on education by developing new educational materials on energy efficiency, which will be available online and presented at a workshop in the second year of the project.
The approach is twofold:
1) Energy-Efficient Software: LLMs are used to create smarter, energy-saving software solutions for data centers. These models learn and adapt, providing real-time feedback to improve efficiency.
2) Educational Materials: a new framework for teaching energy efficiency will be created, emphasizing systems thinking. This holistic approach helps students understand the broader impact of energy use and find innovative solutions.
The project is structured around three main thrusts:
1) Measuring the impact of LLMs on energy-efficient programming.
2) Creating and sharing new educational materials.
3) Hosting a workshop to disseminate our findings.
If successful, this project could revolutionize energy-aware software engineering and education. We’re excited to see the positive changes it can bring to both the tech industry and the environment.
For more information about our NSF grant, see https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2343595.
Invited Speaker at GenCyber
June 25, 2024: Dr. Chan-Tin was invited at the Oklahoma State University NSF/NSA supported GenCyber Teacher Camp on "Cybercrime and Preventions".
US Cyber Games Open 2024
Congratulations to Chloe Kilroy for scoring 900 points and placing 531 out of 3,100 participants at the US Cyber Games Open 2024!
Best paper award!
A paper titled "Unmasking the Vulnerabilities of Deep Learning Models: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Adversarial Attacks and Defenses" has been awarded the Best Paper Award at the 5th Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC) 2024. This research is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Sungkyunkwan University and Loyola University Chicago, led by authors Firuz Juraev, Mohammed Abuhamad, Eric Chan-Tin, George K. Thiruvathukal, and Tamer Abuhmed. The study provides a comprehensive analysis of black-box adversarial attacks and defenses on deep learning (DL) models, highlighting the increased serious threat that can cause the DL model to misbehave and compromise the performance of critical applications that are using these vulnerable models.
"This research addresses a critical aspect of deep learning by focusing on the robustness of models against adversarial attacks," said Dr. Sean Choi, session chair of SVCC 2024. " Their findings provide invaluable insights that will help enhance the security and reliability of DL models in various safety-critical domains."
The paper's key contributions include a thorough investigation of various black-box attacks on diverse DL architectures. The authors demonstrate that while model complexity correlates with increased robustness, the number of model parameters alone does not ensure higher resilience to existing attacks. The research also explores how different components used in the model and training datasets impact model robustness, revealing significant insights for security-critical applications.
This award-winning research has significant real-world implications, particularly for enhancing the security and reliability of DL models in safety-critical domains like autonomous driving, healthcare and medical diagnosis, industrial automation, and surveillance. The findings emphasize the necessity of robust DL models that can withstand adversarial attacks, making it crucial to understand and defend against these threats. This study paves the way for future research on advanced attacks and the robustness of various DL architectures, including Vision Transformers, Graph Neural Networks, and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs).
Undergraduate Summer Research Experience (USRE) Program
Four computer science undergraduates recently showcased their research at the College of Arts and Sciences’ Undergraduate Summer Research Experience (USRE) program. Over the past four weeks, these students worked on their projects and presented their findings on Friday to an audience of students, staff, faculty, family, and friends.
Francis Olakangil, mentored by Dr. George Thiruvathukal, researched how to make software more portable and secure. His project, “Enhancing Software Portability and Security: A Systematic Evaluation of Unikernels and Library OS Containerization,” looked at new technologies that could improve software performance and safety.
Lynette Lim and Katarina Krivokapic, working with Dr. Eric Chan-Tin, studied ways to slow the spread of misinformation. Their project, “Slowing Spread of Misinformation Through Inoculation,” aimed to find methods to help people recognize and resist false information.
Kentaro Fujii, also mentored by Dr. Eric Chan-Tin, focused on protecting user privacy online. His research, “Defense Against Website Fingerprinting Attacks,” explored techniques to prevent tracking of users’ web activities.
The USRE program (more information at USRE Program) gives students the chance to do hands-on research and learn from experienced mentors. The presentations on June 14 highlighted the impressive work these students accomplished, showing great promise for the future of computer science.
Commencement 2024
Congratulations to all students who graduated this past May!
IEEE S&P 2024
Poster "Encrypted Network Traffic Analysis" at IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024 in San Francisco, CA and short talk on "The State of Network Traffic Analysis".
Pictured are Jack West (BS '20, MS '22), Josh Honig, Madeline Moran, and Eric Chan-Tin
Josh presented the short talk and Josh and Madeline were both the poster presenters.
Panelist at CISO Council with Palo Alto
Dr. Chan-Tin was one of the panelists at a CISO Council on "The Current Threat Landscape & Staying a Step Ahead of Future Cyber Trends" with Palo Alto, DoorDash, Schneider Electric. More information at C-Vision website
NCL Cyber Power Rankings Spring 2024
The NCL Spring 2024 season is over! Loyola University Chicago ranked 26th National, 8th in Central Region and 16th for CAE institutions Individual Game: Out of 7,407 individuals competing, Joshua Honig ranked 45th with 2,730 points, Nathan Ferrell ranked 269th with 2,235 points and Sophia Homan ranked 618th with 1,755 points. Team Game: Our team consisting of Madeline Moran, Sophia Homan, Nathan Ferrell, Arrianna Szymczak, Joshua Honig, and Daniel Gaevskiy, ranked 43rd out of 4,199 teams with 2,580 points. Congrats to all students who competed! NCL Cyber Power Rankings
Loyola Undergraduate Research and Experience Symposium
Several students presented their poster at the annual 2024 Loyola Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium. The students are Maddie Juarez, Arrianna Szymczak, Erin Robertson, Nancy Rojas, Laila Hamdan, Sophia Homan, Sloan Luckie, Tanner Dudersdadt, Joi Rae Connor, Victoria Ward, and Rylee Abaya.
Loyola Graduate Student Mentor Award
Congratulations to Isaac Ahlgren, who was awarded the Loyola Graduate Student Mentor award on April 20, 2024 at the Loyola Undergraduate Research & Engagement Symposium Award Ceremony. Full list of awards and nominees
April 15, 2024
New paper to be published at ACISP 2024.
Authors: Madeline Moran, Arrianna Szymczak, Anna Hart, Shelia Kennison, and Eric Chan-Tin
Title: Deep Dive on Relationship between Personality and Password Creation
Sponsor: National Science Foundation and Dr. Scholl Foundation
April 11, 2024
Madeline Moran, Anisa Ramos, and Nika Primus attended the 2024 Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) conference in Nashville, TN from April 11 to April 13, 2024.
March 30, 2024
Loyola University Chicago ranked #35 in the CursedCTC competition. Well done to all students who participated!
March 24, 2024
Two teams from Loyola University Chicago participated in JerseyCTF.
7968.2 consisting of Josh Honig and Arrianna Szymczak ranked #69 out of 520 teams.
7968 consisting of Eno Dynowski, Nathan Ferrell, Seaver Olson, and Sloan Luckie ranked #147 out of 520 teams.
Go Ramblers!
March 23, 2024
A team from Loyola University Chicago, consisting of Hannah Traud, Mariana Hernandez, Nika Primus, Devon Griffith, Caitlin McHale, and Mahnoor Aftab, participated in the 2024 NCAE Cyber Games competition. MVP was Hannah Traud and Most Improved Player was Mariana Hernandez. Congrats to all!
March 22, 2024
Tanner Dudersdadt, Joi Rae Connor, Victoria Ward, and Rylee Abaya, mentored by Dr. Chan-Tin and Dr. Stalans, presented a poster titled "Examining Misinformation on Social Media Sites and the Characteristics that Predict Why It Spreds" at the 2024 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) in Chicago, IL on March 22.
March 15, 2024
Two teams from Loyola University Chicago competed in the VIVID competition from March 11 to March 14. Team 1 (7968) consisted of Josh Honig, Madeline Moran, Nathan Ferrell, Mahnoor Aftab, and Sophia Homan. Team 2 (Loyola 2) consisted of Arrianna Szymczak and Laila Hamdan. Pictured are Josh, Lucy, Nathan, Sophia, Mahnoor, and Madeline. The teams ranked 29th and 44th respectively out of 91 teams and 65 unique institutions. Congrats to all!
March 12, 2024
Dr. Chan-Tin, Director for the Loyola Center for Cybersecurity, was one of the Vision Voice speakers at the CISO Chicago Think Tank on March 12. See https://www.cvisionintl.com/events/think-tank/2024-mar-12-ciso-tt-chicago-1/ for the event's agenda.
February 17, 2024
Loyola University Chicago participated in the Midwest Regionals of the CCDC (Cyber Collegiate Defense Competition) on Saturday February 17. This is the second time Loyola participated in this national competition and ranked above average. Well done to all! The team consisted of Josh Honig (captain), Nathan Ferrell, Sophia Homan, Erin Robertson, Sloan Luckie, Arrianna Szymczak, Laila Hamdan, and Nancy Rojas. This was the first competition for Erin, Sloan, Arrianna, Laila, and Nancy!
Loyola awarded a $3.8 million NSF award to establish a CyberCorps SFS program
December 19, 2023
The program, "CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: CyberRamblers Bolster National Security", will provide scholarships to undergraduate students majoring in the BS in Cybersecurity major. The CyberRamblers scholars will then continue their career by working in an executive branch of the government.
2023 Archive
December 13 Talk by Dr. Neil Klingensmith on "Zero Involvement Authentication for the Internet of Things" at the US CYBERCOM Academic Engagement Network Tech Talk
December 1 NCL Fall 2023 Season
Loyola ranked 48 out of 521 colleges and universities!
Joshua Honig ranked 32 in Individual game, Eno Dynowski ranked 63rd
The Avengers, consisting of Ethan Davis, Waad Al Abdulrhman, Fayaz Syed, Nicholas Synovic, Nitya Guntaka, Mohammed Sheriff, and Matthew Marlovitz, ranked 66th in Team Game out of 454 teams
December 1 Our fall CS seminar series concluded with great security-related talks by external speakers: Dr. David Mohaisen from University of Central Florida and Dr. Shelia Kennison from Oklahoma State University.
November 15 Congratulations to Dr. Mohammed Abuhamad for his NSF award, "Education DCL: EAGER: Developing Experiential Cybersecurity and Privacy Training for AI Practitioners", to host multiple workshops for AI practitioners. https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2335700&HistoricalAwards=false
November 4 Josh Honig (captain), Eno Dynowski, Taryn Chovan, Madeline Moran, Sophia Homan, and Amy Kuhl participated in the DoE Cyberforce competition. The team ranked 17th out of 95 teams. Congrats!
September 22 A red team from Loyola participated in the Hack the Hospital competition, represented by Josh Honig (captain), Eno Dynowski, Nathan Ferrell, Amy Kuhl, and Sophia Homan.
June 9 Poster accepted and presented at the NCAE symposium.
May 19 Two papers presented at IEEE SVCC 2023
May 10 Congratulations to Erin Robertson, National Cyber Scholars 2023 - https://www.nationalcyberscholarship.org/winners-2023
April 22 Congrats to Eno Dynowski for his Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award!Madeline Moran and Maddie Juarez also presented a poster each at the URES 2023.
April 15 A team from Loyola participated in the National Cyber League Spring 23 season.Well done to Eliora Horst, Katherine Lieber, Madeline Moran, Erin Robertson, Amy Kuhl, Nathan Ferrell, Kenneth Hernandez!
April 7 Team from Loyola participated in the Hack the Hospital Qualifying and qualified for the finals!Participants: Eno Dynowski, Josh Honig, Amy Kuhl, Kenneth Hernandez, William Mack
April 6 Congrats to Nimra Khan and Taryn Chovan for being awarded the Scholarship for Women Studying Information Security
April 1 Participation in NCAE CyberGames MidwestParticipants: Madeline Moran, Yehudah David, Nathan Ferrell, Erin Robertson, Eliora HorstMVP: Eliora HorstMost Improved: Yehudah David
February 18 Loyola University Chicago participated in the state CCDC (Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on February 18. This is the first time Loyola has participated in CCDC. Ramblers participating were Eno Dynowski (captain), Josh Honig, William Mack, Robert Bitunjac, Kenneth Hernandez, Amy Kuhl, Erik Pautsch, and Taryn Chovan. The team did well and showed good performance for a new team.
2022 Archive
December 9, 2022 Loyola University Chicago participated in the National Cyber League Fall 2022 season. The university, as a whole, ranked 84th overall and 64th for CAE colleges. The best team from Loyola, comprised of Eno Dynowski, Taha Siddiqui, Amy-Lauren Kuhl, Robert Bitunjac, William Mack, Yuxin Chen, and Jess Bajerek, scored 1430 points! (the team ranked 100th out of 3,900 teams scored 1440 points)
November 19, 2022 Loyola University Chicago participated in the Global Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC). The team at Loyola consisted of Eno Dynowski, William Mack, Robert Bitunjac, Kenneth Hernandez, Josh Honig, and Emily Meister.
November 9, 2022 A team of students participated in the Department of Energy CyberForce Competition on November 4-5, 2022. The team led by team captain Josh Honig ranked 24th overall and 1st in GreenTeam scoring out of over 150 teams/universities. Congratulations to Josh Honig, Madeline Moran, Taryn Chovan, Amy Kuhl, Jess Bajerek, and Kenneth Hernandez!
September 29, 2022 Congrats to Madeline Moran, Amy Kuhl, Erin Robertson, Kenneth Hernandez, and Nathan Ferrell for being selected as the 2022-2023 Motorola Solutions Foundation Cybersecurity Experiential Scholars! This program, led by Dr. Eric Chan-Tin, introduces students to hands-on cybersecurity practice and research. #MotoSolutionsCares
September 24, 2022 Anne Wagner and Rachel Gordon attended Grace Hopper Celebration 2022!
August 1, 2022 Loyola University Chicago participated in the 2022 CAE-NCX competition from April 11 to April 13. Loyola ranked 1st in the Software Development Module. Congrats to Haris Qazi, Madeline Moran, Eno Dynowski, William Mack, Robert Bitunjac, Kenneth Hernandez, Josh Honig, Laura Adams, Tim Abbenhaus, and Jack Hightower! Go Ramblers!
July 8, 2022 Loyola University Chicago participated in the National Cyber League Spring 2022 season. The university ranked #55 overall, out of over 500 colleges and universities. In the Team game, ForSociety (Nickolas Kusman, Haris Qazi, Pablo Czutrin, Jackson West, Collin Jones, Vasil Mitrev, Jack Hightower) ranked #76 with 2065/3000 points. Congratulations to all students who participated! Go Ramblers! To learn more about the National Cyber League and rankings for the season, please visit their website.
July 7, 2022 Loyola University Chicago was officially recognized as having been designated as a DHS/NSA National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense at a designation ceremony at NICE 2022, on June 8 2022.
May 17, 2022 Congratulations to Madeline Moran for being recognized as a 2022 recipient of the Loyola Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award.
March 18, 2022 Madeline Moran, a junior majoring in cybersecurity and computer science, and Eliora Horst, a MS student in computer science, attended the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) 2022 in Cleveland, Ohio. Pictured are Eliora in front of her poster "Where in the World is SHA-3?" and Madeline.
February 28, 2022 A team from Loyola University Chicago participated in the NCAE Cyber Games - Midwest Regionals on Saturday February 19. Although Loyola did not qualify for the finals, the team placed second in the CTF category. Congratulations to Madeline Moran, Kenneth Hernandez, Patrycja Dabrowska, Hannah Traud, and Chris Flores! Madeline was named MVP and Patrycja was most-improved player. Preparation for this competition is made possible through a grant from the Motorola Solutions Foundation. #MotorolaSolutionsCares
February 1, 2022 Congratulations to Daisy Reyes for receiving an Honorable Mention at the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awards. https://cra.org/about/awards/outstanding-undergraduate-researcher-award/
2021 Archive
December 17, 2021 Loyola University Chicago is one of 84 colleges and universities selected to partner with the United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) Academic Engagement Network (AEN) across our enterprise, which includes USCYBERCOM Headquarters, Joint Force HQ-DODIN, the Cyber National Mission Force, Air Force Cyber Command/16th Air Force, Army Cyber Command/ 2nd Army, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command, and the U.S. Coast Guard Cyber Command. The USCYBERCOM AEN consists of 70 universities, 14 community colleges, 4 Service Academies, and 4 Federal Graduate-level Colleges. https://www.cybercom.mil/Media/News/Article/2889614/cybercom-announces-academic-engagement-network-partners/
December 14, 2021 The National Cyber League Power Rankings for Fall 2021 are out! Loyola University Chicago ranked 46th overall, 15th in the Central Region, and 30th in CAE schools. In the Team game, we ranked 91st out of 3910 teams. Our best team, consisting of Haris Qazi, Jalan Cruz, Pablo Czutrin, Collin Jones, and Nickolas Kusman, scored 2325/3000 points! In the Individual game, the top 5 students were Haris Qazi, Jalan Cruz, Anthony Skinner, Vasil Mitrev, and Martin Zugschwert. Haris scored 2385/3000 points and ranked 139th out of 6478 participants. Congrats to all!
December 9, 2021 Eric Chan-Tin gave an overview of Loyola University Chicago for the "Getting to Know your Fellow CAEs" at the CAE Community of Practice (CoP) in Cyber Defense.
December 7, 2021 Three student teams from Loyola University Chicago participated in the metaCTF Cybergames during the weekend of December 4. Congrats to Eno Dynowski, William Mack, Robert Bitunjac, Haris Qazi, Pablo Czutrin, and Nickolas Kusman! Team Lactose Intolerant was ranked 84 in the student category and 177 overall. Team LUC was ranked 105 in the student category and 217 overall. Team Like Scoobs, we just got hacked! was ranked 347 in the student category and 725 overall. There were 1022 student teams and 1922 teams in total. Loyola University Chicago ranked 35th overall among all schools
December 7, 2021 We are happy to announce the five scholars of the cybersecurity experiential scholarships. From left to right, Madeline Moran, Patryjca Dabrowska, Hannah Traud, Kenneth Hernandez, and Chris Flores. This is made possible through a grant from the Motorola Solutions Foundation. #MotoSolutionsCares
November 22, 2021 Loyola University Chicago participated in the DoE CyberForce competition on Saturday November 13. The team consisting of Haris Qazi (team captain), Jalan Cruz, Nick Kusman, and Pablo Czutrin, was ranked 71st out of 120 teams. Congrats to the whole team!
October 29, 2021 Meredith Kasper, pen-test manager at Hurricane Labs, will present at Loyola University Chicago at 4:30pm. The talk will be livestreamed on Zoom. The talk will cover her experience in cybersecurity, what she does as a cybersecurity professional, and other fun cybersecurity stories.
October 26, 2021 Shafia Zubair, Manager of Information Security at Morningstar, will speak at Loyola about "Career in Cybersecurity: Is it right for me?". The talk will be livestreamed via Zoom at 4:00pm.
October 19, 2021 FBI Supervisory Special Agent Bixby will discuss cybersecurity at the FBI at 4:30pm in Dumbach 228. There will also be a livestream on Zoom.
October 4, 2021 Eric Chan-Tin gave a talk at the CISSE 2021 to go over the new BS in cybersecurity curriculum at Loyola University Chicago.
September 27, 2021 Loyola University Chicago is thrilled to have received a grant for $25,000 from the Motorola Solutions Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Motorola Solutions. Through the grant, we’ll provide cybersecurity experiential scholarships to five undergraduate students. Learn more. #MotoSolutionsCares
September 23, 2021 Sammy Gorbett, one of our instructors, gave a "Resume Building and Interviewing Skills" presentation at the CAE Midwest hub meeting.
September 1, 2021 Congratulations to George Thiruvathukal and Neil Klingensmith for their new NSF award on enabling computer vision applications at the edge using automated contextual analysis!
July 1, 2021 Congratulations to George Thiruvathukal and Neil Klingensmith for their new NSF award on researching low-power computer vision at the edge!
June 1, 2021 The Spring 2021 season of the National Cyber League has wrapped up. Congratulations to all students who participated. Overall, Loyola ranked 68 overall and ranked 20 in the Central region. For the Individual game, Anthony Skinner and Jalan Cruz ranked 173 and 298 respectively out of 3,301 players. For the Team game, Loyola had four teams participating. The first team consisting of Anthony Skinner and Jalan Cruz ranked 117 out of 922 teams with 2,285/3,000 points. The second team consisting of Gabe Huerta, Nick Kusman, Monica Sieklucki, Yong Shao, Mohammed Saleh, and Muhammad Lodhi ranked 143 out of 922 teams.
May 18, 2021 Congrats to Eno Dynowski for finishing in the top 400 of the Cyber FastTrack CTF competition! Eno was awarded a scholarship for the placement in the competition.
April 21, 2021 Congratulations to Anna Bakas for being recognized as a 2021 recipient of the Loyola Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award!
April 20, 2021 Dr. Polakis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wiill give a talk on "Awakening the Web’s Sleeper Agents: Misusing Service Workers for Privacy Leakage".
April 16, 2021 Congratulations to Haris Qazi for placing third at the CYRIN CTF competition! Haris had the third fastest time of competitors from the US and Europe!
January 14, 2021 Daisy Reyes gave a talk at FloCon 2021! Daisy is currently a junior in the B.S. in computer science program and is working on Autonomous Vehicles and Web Privacy.
January 4, 2021 Monica Sieklucki was selected to receive a Research Experience for Master's fellowship for Spring 2021. She is in the M.S. in computer science program, working with Dr. Abuhamad, on adversarial machine learning.
2020 Archive
December 2, 2020 Talk "Inside Out: Can Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, or Disgust Affect Your Security?" presented at the CAE forum by Eric Chan-Tin.
November 22, 2020 Congrats to Haris Qazi (team captain), Jalan Cruz, Justin Kim, Anran Wang, Jack West, Mike Robinson, Claudia Holtsclaw, Eno Dynowski, Gabe Huerta, and Titus Filimon for competing in the HTB Uni CTF 2020 competition! Great job!
October 26, 2020 Loyola University Chicago sent 3 teams (virtually) to compete in the MetaCTF CyberGames 2020. Congrats to Justin Kim, Gabe Huerta, Eno Dynowski, Shao Yong, Haris Qazi, Elijah Wooten, Anran Wang, Laura Adams, Tim Abbenhaus, and Duncan Rout! SeaShanty2 ranked 159 (out of 646 active teams) in the student category. The team ranked 254 (out of 995 active teams) overall including non-students teams. LUC ranked 257 in the students' category. The Fighting Mongooses ranked 357 in the students' category. Congrats to all who participated! https://compete.metactf.com/30/scoreboard
October 14, 2020 Cyber Fire Puzzles and Fun event wrapped up with 49 participants and 10 teams. Thank you to Argonne National Lab for hosting. Congrats to Trickbots! Stay tuned for the next cyber event!
July 30, 2020 Some Center for Cyber Security members participated in the AWS Security JAM x WiCyS Beginner and ranked 4th! Congratulations to those who participated.
June 24, 2020 Members of the Center gave the keynote speech on "2020 Vision for Web Privacy" at the ACM 3rd International Workshop on System and Network Telemetry and Analytics (SNTA). A copy of the keynote can be obtained at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXfDsL9_-PE
June 5, 2020 Loyola University Chicago has been designated as an NSA/DHS National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defence (CAE CD)
May 24, 2020 Members of the Center participated in the ATHENA Virtual Lecture Day, hosted by Women in STEM. The lecture was on "Web Privacy".
April 22, 2020 Congratulations to Spencer Johnston and Jackson West for winning the Loyola Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award!
April 21, 2020 Congrats to all students who participated in the National Cyber League competition for Spring 2020. Loyola University Chicago ranked 20th nationally. Special shout-out to "Z and the Big Boys", led by Robert Kania. The team scored 2,440 points and ranked 34 out of 931 teams. Other teams from Loyola University Chicago included BIG BANG, Script Kiddies, FlattenTheCurve2020, and Hacking4Hire. Participating students were Maha Alzanbaqi, Zara Batalvi, Job Coritana, Pablo Czutrin, Kevin Donohue, Meskerem Gebrehiwet, Matthew Hempe, Claudia Holtsclaw, Spencer Johnston, Anthony Kaczkowski, Robert Kania, Saad Khan, Jenet Kolaparan, Joe Mazich, Mustafa Mjawaz, Alec Park, Dipen Patel, Irfan Poljak, Haris Qazi, Mike Robinson, Abdul Salam, Logan Walsh, Michael White.
April 2, 2020 Due to university restrictions on gatherings, this event has been canceled.
2019 Archive
November 16, 2019 Loyola University Chicago participates in the DoE CyberForce competition. The team scored over 5,300 points and ranked 2nd (out of 104 teams) in "Operational Support". Students participating were Marcell Gyongy, Claudia Holtsclaw, Hans Johnson, Jessica Medintz, Abdul Salam, and Michael White.
November 13, 2019 Paul Edlund, Chief Technologist at Microsoft, gave a talk to the cybersecurity group at Loyola University Chicago.
October 27, 2019 Congrats to Nick Kolasinski, Michael White, and Gabe Huerta for placing first, second, and third in the National Cyber League (NCL) Fall competition at Loyola!
September 21, 2019 John Mikos, a junior in Computer Science, presented a poster at the STARS Celebration in San Diego, CA!
June 18, 2019 A delegation from the Philippines, consisting of law enforcement, a senator, and a lawyer, visited the cybersecurity center to learn more about the curriculum, research, and possible collaboration.
May 13, 2019 Nine students from Loyola University Chicago (Andrew Wolke, Taryn Chovan, Jessica Medintz, Brian Nguyen, Devin Zayas, Morgan Richardson, Michael Collins, Gabriel Huerta, and Job Coritana) participated in the spring season of the National Cyber League. In the individual game competition, Jessica Medintz ranked 480 out of 1263 competitors in her bracket. In the team game competition, the LUCTF team, consisting of Andrew Wolke, Taryn Chovan, and Jessica Medintz) ranked 144 out of 275 teams.
March 24, 2019 LUCTF participated in the Securinets Prequels 2K19 and placed 218 out of 436.
March 19, 2019 Center for Cybersecurity virtual website is set up.
March 12, 2019 The LUCTF team participated in the TAMU CTF!
February 24, 2019 The team from Loyola University Chicago, LUCTF, ranked 55 out of 539 teams in the MITRE Cyber Challenge 2019. Congrats to Taryn Chovan!
2018 Archive
December 1, 2018 Loyola University Chicago participates in the DoE CyberForce competition. Participants are Taryn Chovan, Morgan Richardson, David Cheng, Devin Zayas, and Jess Conway.