Cyber Operations RangE (CORE): Containerized Gaming Platform for Cyberoperations Competitions

Huntsville (Ala.)

Cybersecurity gaming is popularized through capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions, war games, and forensic challenges. Providing actual hands-on experience, the cybersecurity competitions have great potential to support classroom learning, professional skill development, and scenario testing. To capitalize this, the supporting gaming platforms need to overcome the following issues: i) A complex virtualized infrastructure that requires extensive resources and administration, ii) Lack of support for real-time cyberoperations within a competition environment, and iii) implementation of independent, real-time scoring system which tracks progress and determines results of the competitors. In response to these issues, we have developed Cyber Operations RangE (CORE) - a containerized cybersecurity gaming platform. This paper presents the design, implementation, and the application of the CORE platform for real-time cyberoperations competitions.