All official Hivestorm communications post registration will be sent to the team captain and coach. Check for email from admin@hivestorm.org or @utsa.edu addresses.

Overview

Hivestorm is a collegiate-focused cyber defense competition. Teams compete by securing provided Windows and Linux based virtual machines – removing malware and other infections, correcting misconfigurations, mitigating vulnerabilities, disabling vulnerable services, and so on. Teams accumulate points for addressing each scored issue and must race against the clock to accumulate as many points as they can before time expires.

Game Play

At the beginning of Hivestorm events, teams are provided with a set of virtual machines each worth 100 points. To score points, teams must address the security related issues on each of those virtual machines. Teams may need to find and remove a persistent threat, correct permissions on the root directory of a webserver, or restrict remote access to the Windows Registry. Team actions are scored in near real-time by automated agents providing direct feedback to competitors for both positive actions (that accumulate points) and negative actions (that result in penalties and a loss of points).

Benefits for Competitors

Hivestorm provides an excellent opportunity for teams to practice security, forensic, configuration, and system administration tasks. The defensive and administration skills developed and exercised in Hivestorm help prepare students for other events such as the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition or Panoply.

Team Composition

Hivestorm teams consist of 2 to 4 players. Players must be registered students of the institution they are representing. Colleges and universities may enter multiple teams, but students may only participate on a single team during each Hivestorm event.

Hardware and Network Requirements

Teams must have their own equipment capable of running the provided virtual machines. Virtual machines must have Internet connectivity to communicate with the scoring server. The recommended minimum hardware requirements for the host systems running the VMs are: