Hacking the Competition

Students at the University of Virginia School of Law recently helped introduce law and policy questions into UVA’s MetaCTF cybersecurity competition for the first time, and led one team of coders to victory.

The competition, held Oct. 20 this year at the Darden School of Business, challenges and encourages participants to learn new techniques and concepts related to cybersecurity, from technical skills such as reconnaissance, cryptography, binary and web exploitation, reverse engineering, and forensics to legal and business skills such as risk management and incident response.

Students from the Law, Innovation, Security and Technology society partnered with UVA’s undergraduate Computer and Network Security Club to introduce the new law and policy component. Other LIST members participated in the competition, joining teams of coders from across the state. About law 20 students, including first-years and LL.M. students, participated in all.

First-year law student Christina Luk helped her team of coders, called the “CyberPunks,” win first place in the event’s law and policy component.

“I was thrilled to hear that law students with no coding backgrounds were helping their computer science teammates with the coding challenges too, not just the law and policy questions,” said Chinmayi Sharma ’19, a co-founder and former president of LIST who helped organize the competition.

“But the best part of the day was seeing the non-lawyers at the event get as involved in the law and policy challenges as the UVA law students participating — it was great to see them parse through judicial opinions, interpret statutes and actually enjoy it.”