Rogers High students in national cyberwar contest

Worms and viruses, backdoor programs and spyware, passwords and security codes – computer owners lose sleep over how best to keep their computers safe from outside intruders with malignant intentions. And the truth is that for every new firewall and virus protection program that’s being launched, there is an army of computer hackers ready to destroy and disable it.

And then there are people like Benjamin Donnelly, Cyrus Soheili, Chris Crozier and Jacob Thompson, who all are students at Rogers High School and refer to themselves as the good computer guys. They compete in how to protect computers from outside attacks by hackers and spammers, and they just qualified for the third round of the national CyberPatriot competition.

CyberPatriot is part of the ROTC program and it is Master Sgt. William L. “Loyd” Patton, III, who’s the group’s instructor.

“They learn how to protect computers from outside attacks,” said Patton as the group was getting ready Thursday afternoon. “It’s pretty challenging.”

On Saturday they participated in the second round of the national competition even though they did so well in the first round that they could skip it.

“We said we’d compete anyhow – it’s like training,” Patton said.

There are more than 400 teams from all over the country in the CyberPatriot competition.

The students explain that the competition is a lot like real life where programmers work 24-7 to protect servers at places like the Pentagon and the local bank from intruders.

“It’s done on a virtual computer and we have six hours to find 20 security holes in it,” said Donnelly, 16, and a junior. “And they continue to try and break in and do things while you are sitting there working.”

So they must understand how “bad guys” like hackers and spammers think and operate in order to succeed. They easily slip into geek speak, dropping acronyms like AVG (an anti-virus program) and program names like Zone Alarm (an online security program). When they talk about jail break it’s about hijacking the iPhone’s computer code for use on other phone networks – it’s not about breaking out of the county jail.

They also joke and have fun, kiddingly referring to Soheili as “Cyrus the virus” because he’s so good at figuring viruses out.

One reason for the group’s success in the last round was their ability to continuously come up with incredibly complicated passwords.

“These are really not passwords you can memorize,” said Donnelly, high-fiving Soheili who came up with a great system. “And we change them all the time, during the competition.”

Spend more than a few minutes with these guys and any computer owner is bound to get nervous. That goes for Mac owners, too, by the way. The group agrees that yes, perhaps Macs don’t get viruses as easily as PCs, but all computers operate off code and if you get to that you can create havoc in any system.

“There are programs out there that can figure out passwords, open up your desktop if you have remote access, and wait in line for you to turn on your Wi-Fi when you get home,” said Soheili, 16, and a sophomore. “You should be careful any time there is a data transfer, like from a dating site when people send you pictures of themselves.”

During the competition – much like in real life – the students don’t know what they are up against.

“What we do is we practice shutting down enemy access. It’s that simple,” said Thompson, 17, and a senior.

What’s the best thing a private person can do to protect a home computer?

“Secure your Wi-Fi with a good password and find and update a good virus protection program,” said Donnelly. “And don’t have your password be just a normal word – that’s way too easy to crack.”