Andrew Beers

Competing at CCDC Regionals

Thu, 10 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Competing at CCDC Regionals

Our University of Arkansas team got a lot of experience competing at CCDC regionals. For a lot of the team members, this was there first time in a high-pressure environment dealing with real-world technology.

The competition was two 10-hour days where the Walmart read team, a team of professional good-guy hackers, would try to break into our systems and we had to keep them out. There were no breaks, and the competition was designed to generate as much stress as possible in the short amount of time allotted. This was done by having misconfigured systems, people walking into the room to make other requests that had to be done quickly, and a CEO that would come and yell at use when things weren’t online.

The competition served as a great learning experience for everyone because they had to learn new technologies in an unfamiliar environment under a time constraint. We had people on our team that new each platform (Windows, Linux, Mac, Firewalls, and VMWare ESXi) and put their skills to use. I would recommend anyone interested in security to join a team and compete because it provides a great starting point for technologies and skills to learn in preparation of the real world.

Qualifying for CCDC Regionals

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Our University of Arkansas CCDC team qualified for the SWCCDC regionals competiton

This was the second year our team competed in the CCDC (Collegiate Cyber Defense competition). Last year we had about half a team and no practice and got roasted. This year we have the opportunity to get compete again, but in Tulsa, OK at regionals!

Last year’s CCDC qualifier was used as a learning opportunity. We had never competed before and nobody at our university had knowledge of the types of challenges we would face. During the competition, we took notes over the types of challenges, tools we would need in the future, how the team communicated, and useful roles to recruit for next time.

This year we built several labs to get everyone familiar with Linux, networking, firewalls, VMWare ESXi (this was a big one), and common services like web and ftp servers. We divided our team into roles based on Linux, Windows, business injects, and one person to communicate between all of the teams. We also did a trial run, where we overloaded the team with injects and took notes over where everything broke down, and what people’s strengths and weaknesses were. Then we went to the whiteboard and came up with our roles, communication methods, steps to take when the competition starts, and how to pass tasks between teams.

We would use the white board to keep track of which VMs people were working on to prevent any conflicts and properly assign new technical injects. For business injects, one person on the business inject team would take ownership of the inject and do the majority of the work, then pass it off to a second person for a final review before submitting it. If the business person needed details from a technical person, they would ask the team lead and they would get the information whenever the technical people had some free time. The team lead was also responsible for writing reports follow-up reports after any of the technical people found a breach in systems, or when systems went down and when we could get them back up.

Shell On The Border

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weekends ago, I got to compete at the Shell on the Border cybersecurity event hosted by fs2600. Our team placed 7th out of 21 teams by solving a wide variety of questions. It was a great learning experience and really highlighted that there is room for every skill type in security, whether it’s cracking shells, social engineering, or writing code to solve problems quickly.

Lets Wrap - Cross Device App Practice

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Building an app that works across all iOS devices

I recently updated the first app I built to, Let’s Wrap, to support iPhone X. It lets you calculate what size to cut wrapping paper for a present. I built this app in early 2016 because I wanted to work at Metova doing iOS development. I thought what better way to prove I can be an app developer than to publish an app! The biggest challenge with this app was supporting every device size. The iPhone X notch broke everything of course, I had to set custom constraints to handle the iPad vs iPhone, and extra code to handle how the app responds to the keyboard on iPad Pro 12.9 inch.

iOS: Let’s Wrap - Gift Calculator

Oh, it also had a spike in US downloads on December 24th. Way to go guys.

Razorback Transit Firebase Analytics

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Razorback transit has been live for a couple months, and I’ve collected some anonymous data on how people use the app. There are 68 downloads on Android and 296 downloads on iOS as of December 2017, so nearly all downloads are active users.

The app opens to the live map by default, so if a user only uses the live map tab it won’t show up in the Tab Selected category. Parking is naturally least used.

The demographics that use Android and iOS are interesting as well. Android (left) is mostly male users (male is dark blue), with a wider age distribution. iOS (right) is more evenly distributed between gender but has a smaller age distribution. The gender and age data are handled by Google using the unique device ID that they have associated with your google account, which contains age and gender data. This is all the detail that is logged.

Also, here’s the iOS device types of people using the app

AR Startup Crawl App in Private Alpha

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

After the startup crawl in 2017, I had a few ideas on how to improve the guest experience. I decided to make an app with the locations of startups, which beer is served where, descriptions of the companies, and a live update section so Startup Junkie can keep patrons up to date during the event. It’s just a side project, but it will be ready for 2018 and help bring Fayetteville further into the tech scene.

The app is powered Google Cloud Platform and Firebase for usage analytics, crash reporting, data storage, and push notifications. All data and styles in the app can be configured in real time post-deployment with Firebase Realtime Database, making it easy to do testing and quickly make changes based on what customers want.

iOS Developer Intern at Metova

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

When I arrived at Metova they gave me a blank laptop and told me that my job was to be useful. This turned out to be an amazing opportunity because I got to learn more development practices, come up with new features for customer apps, and fix tools to help the team work faster. Anything was in my job description, so each week was new.

Write unit tests for code
Get my ego kept in check via code reviews
Implement bug fixes for our app using Jira and GitHub pull requests
Use Jenkins for continuous integration testing
Triage bugs reported by customers and decide if there is enough substance to assign it to a developer
Re-design office Wi-Fi network with correct channels and controller configuration
Recruit 2 new interns for the Fayetteville office

CompTIA Secuirty+ Certified

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I just passed my CompTIA Security+ certification yesterday! It took a lot of reading and lynda.com videos, but it was worth it. It was a good foundation for vocabulary and common techniques used in cybersecurity that have been helpful since starting at Walmart as an Intrusion Analyst.

https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/security

Dynamic Defense Engineer Intern at Walmart

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

My role with this team was to build tools and support the security analysts. The team was made up of very capable people from different background and tech fields who were eager to teach and challenge me every day.

Member of Security Ambassadors Program
Host financial class for new coworkers and other interns to discuss steps for financial independence
Integrate MaxMind IP location database into internal search tool and ELK Stack using python
Verify and Integrate local IPAM CSV data into search tool
Create web tool to add devices to monitoring lists that will create alerts in HP ArcSight
Speak at Walmart TAP to high school students about careers in technology and listen to what they expect out of Walmart

Razorback Transit App Now Live

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

After listening to students about what they wanted out of Razorback Transit (our campus bus service), I built the razorback transit! The app intelligently caches all of the images for busses and stops to reduce network usage, decrease startup time, and stabilize performance in areas with low/spotty connectivity. Because of all of the caching, the bus locations can be updated every 5 seconds with minimal network usage (just a single JSON request). It is now live for both iPhone and Android with over 1500 downloads (July 2018) between the two platforms.

Download it here:

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/razorback-transit-live-maps/id1286547241?mt=8

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=razorbacktransit.arcu.razorbacktransit