The Blunderdome: An Offensive Exercise for Building Network, Systems, and Web Security Awareness

In spite of the controversy surrounding the practice of using offensive computer security exercises in information assurance curricula, it holds significant educational value. An exercise and architecture for an asymmetric (offense-only) security project, nicknamed “Blunderdome”, has been deployed twice at the University of Tulsa: once to graduate students in a security engineering course, and once to high school students as part of a research internship program. This paper discusses the framework, the project, its educational value, and lessons learned for future deployments. Coverage is also given briefly to a summary of our position on the role of offensive exercises in security education.