Defense Cyber Crime Center officials host challenge

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LINTHICUM, md. (AFNS) --  Airmen and civilians are now able to submit solutions for the 2010 Defense Cyber Crime Center Digital Forensics Challenge to compete against more than 975 teams for a chance to win 11 different prizes.

The DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge is a public, online, and international Challenge held annually by DC3 officials and is an annual call to the digital forensics community to pioneer new investigative tools, techniques and methodologies.

The Digital Forensics Challenge was created by Jim Christy, the director of future exploration at DC3.

"We had 1,153 teams play from 61 different countries (in the 2009 contest), so it was kind of amazing," Mr. Christy.

Though contestants work on invented puzzles, researchers harvest real crime-solving tools from their efforts. Those tools can help them stay ahead of criminal activity ranging from hacking to espionage to child pornography.

The 2010 DC3 Forensics Challenge encourages innovation from a broad range of individuals, teams, and institutions to provide technical solutions for computer forensic examiners in the lab as well as in the field. Approximately 20 different unique, single based challenges ranging from basic forensics to advanced tool development are being provided to all participants for this annual challenge.

Prizes from DC3 Challenge sponsors range from trips to the 2011 DOD Cyber Crime Conference, tours of cybercrime facilities and academies and official award recognitions, grants, and training. Prizes are awarded based on the teams' overall citizenship and affiliation as civilians, military, government or level of academia.

Sponsors include DC3, SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security Institute; the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats, the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants; John Hopkins Carey Business School; Cyber Watch and the Cyber Security Challenge UK.

Teams of 1 to 4 people can sign up before Nov. 1. To sign up and to read challenge rules visit www.dc3.mil/challenge/2010/apply/.

Teams are recommended to upload their solutions for the individual challenges to the DC3 Challenge team before Nov. 2. Each submission counts toward the final score to qualify teams for their prizes.

Submissions will be graded and winners announced Dec. 1 by the DC3 Challenge team for each prize and the overall points winner on the 2010 DC3 Challenge website.

(Courtesy of Defense Cyber Crime Center Public Affairs. Judith Snyderman contributed to this article)