The Dark Blue CyberPatriot Training Tool

Abstract

The Dark Blue CyberPatriot Training Tool was developed to help better prepare teams for the CyberPatriot competition, which aims to introduce middle school and high school students to the field of cybersecurity. Dark Blue allows coaches to create a configuration file for a practice image, with a generator component that will take the file and attempt to create as much of the configuration as possible automatically on a blank virtual machine image. To simulate the competition round, Dark Blue also includes a custom built scoring engine that is configured by the generator. We believe Dark Blue improves ease of use significantly over other training tools, and could help teams create better practice images with less effort and knowledge required. It also allows teams to create and share practice images freely with other teams, which we believe could have a lasting positive impact on the competition as a whole. Dark Blue is to be released as free and open-source software in the near future.