NUCCDC

Northeastern University's Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Team

What is CCDC?

The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition is an annual red-team vs. blue-team competition between colleges and universities in the United States.

The competition is split into various regions across the US, and our team is part of the Northeast region.

The Team

Our team consists of students from many diverse backgrounds and fields of expertise.

Charlie's face
Charlie

  • Our captain
  • Focus: Industrial systems and obscure Linux things
  • Still runs MacOS Big Sur, except when she’s using NixOS
  • Has a concerning habit of collecting headless laptops

Simon Bruklich's face
Simon Bruklich

  • Our coach
  • 2022-2023 captain, led team to 2023 CCDC Nationals
  • Focus: Windows
  • Started Windows career on XP circa 2008
  • Prefers Windows Home over Windows Pro

Derek Ng's face
Derek Ng

  • Our coach
  • Focus: Linux

Shannon Assouline's face
Shannon Assouline

  • Focus: Linux
  • “i have nothing interesting about me”

Evan Defloor's face
Evan Defloor

  • Focus: Windows
  • Linux rice enthusiast
  • Got into cyber after being IP located on Omegle

Jake Ginesin's face
Jake Ginesin

  • Focus: Linux and Networking
  • Does some stuff with math that you won’t understand
  • Formally analyzed the SCTP protocol

Penelope Om's face
Penelope Om

  • Focus: Linux

Thomas Dwyer's face
Thomas Dwyer

  • Windows lead
  • Voluntarily uses a worse kernel for laptop (Linux)
  • Regrets using .NET

Incoming Members

Members currently in training to compete next season.

Ari Prakash's face
Ari Prakash

  • aarch64 for the win

Elias Larsen's face
Elias Larsen

  • Linux/Windows dualbooter

Ian Agudelo's face
Ian Agudelo

  • Uses AD for fun

Riley Platz's face
Riley Platz

  • Born to write firewall rules; forced to do frontend QA

Alumni

Previous team members, captains, and coaches.

Federico Cassano's face
Federico Cassano

  • 2023-2024 captain
  • Focus: Virtualization and Linux
  • Enjoys the Racket programming langugage
  • Likes to write papers in his free time

Ali Bobi's face
Ali Bobi

  • 2023-2024 co-captain
  • Focus: Windows
  • Vim connoisseur

Owen Seltzer's face
Owen Seltzer

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Kyle Sferrazza's face
Kyle Sferrazza

  • 2021-2022 captain, led team to CCDC Nationals
  • 2022-2023 coach
  • Focus: Linux
  • Knows every CLI argument for GNU screen
  • “Our domain controller is running out of battery!”

Max Sebso's face
Max Sebso

  • Focus: Linux

Dennis Giese's face
Dennis Giese

Michael Wang's face
Michael Wang

  • 2020-2021 coach

Matthew Kline's face
Matthew Kline

  • 2020-2021 captain
  • Focus: Windows
  • Can trigger a Blue Screen of Death on anything

Brianna Weinstein's face
Brianna Weinstein

  • Focus: Linux

Fiona McCrae's face
Fiona McCrae

  • Focus: Linux
  • Reinstalled OS on family computer to circumvent parental controls (age 12)
  • Bricked family computer

Samir Elhelw's face
Samir Elhelw

  • Focus: SOC & Windows

Hava Kantrowitz's face
Hava Kantrowitz

  • Focus: SOC & Networks

How do I join?

We’re glad you’re interested in joining the team!

We have an annual tryout process which takes place between the end of September and early November. The CCDC competition starts early in the spring semester. Everyone is welcome to try out – graduates and undergraduates, as well as international students.

You can obtain more information regarding CCDC (including tryouts) by joining our mailing list or sending us an email at [email protected].