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The embedded cybersecurity competition is an annual semester-long CTF run by MITRE Corporation. It is an attack-defense CTF which makes participants dive into cryptography and embedded firmware, and design a secure system that holds up to attack against other universities.

In 2024, the objective was to design firmware for a medical device consisting of three boards - an application processor and two auxillary components which would model devices like an insulin pump. Our goal was to design and implement a protocol for all boards to verify each other before booting, and provide a secure communications layer that provided integrity and authenticity of commands sent between boards. Our design used public key cryptography combined with root certificates to perform a secure handshake before boot, and used symmetric encryption with AEAD for post-boot communications that was resistant to tampering.

Members of the cybersecurity club took part in the competition and placed 9th out of over 95 international teams! We also had the opportunity to present our design at the award ceremony in Boston.

Our design

Photos

Team Members

Udbhav Saxena, Felipe Marques Allevato, Riley Cook, Aashish Harishchandre, Aditya Chaudhari, Fatima Saad, Samay Achar, Krishna Patel, Radhe Patel, and Charles Selipsky, Nika Ghasemi Barmi

Advisors: Dr. Qiben (Ben) Yan, Adrian Self