Abstract:

The field of IT-Security is getting more and more complex, due to the increasing amount of skills needed. Examples for these skills are web security, software security, or forensics. This also affects the teaching experience in this area. Since, lectures only have restricted time to teach the necessary competences, needed to work in such an environment.

We therefore propose a method where students increase their learning success by combining the traditional learning at the university with training and IT-Security tournaments outside the classroom. These tournaments, also known as Capture The Flag (CTF) events take place all over the world. In the CTFs participants have to solve challenges in the various areas of IT-Security to gather flags, which are strings to prove their success.

In our concept we use the classes at the university to provide key concepts and basic understanding of different IT-Security fields and support the participants in their training. Outside the class, the students form a CTF team, where they support each other in trainings organized on their own. In these teams, the students can harden their skills for the contests in which they choose to participate. To motivate the students, they receive credits for parts of the lecture if they compete in CTF tournaments.

Our experience with this method shows that competitions strengthen the intrinsic motivation of the participants, which further increases the learning success enormously. Students who do not participate still gather all the needed basics and key concepts.

Keywords:

IT-Security, Capture the Flag.