Abstract
The use of the Capture the Flag (CTF)-style competitions has grown popular in a variety of environments as a method to improve or reinforce cybersecurity techniques. However, while these competitions have shown promise in student engagement, enjoyment, and the teaching of essential workforce cybersecurity concepts, many of these CTF challenges have largely focused on cybersecurity as a general topic. Further, most in-school CTF challenges are designed with technical institutes in mind, prepping only experienced or upper-level students in cybersecurity studies for real-world challenges. Our paper aims to focus on the setting of a liberal arts institute, emphasizing secure coding as the focus of CTF-engaged learning for beginner to upper-level undergraduate students. We propose a survey system to evaluate the secure coding mentality of our students before and after taking these challenges, as well as an easily-hosted, low-resource CTF platform that students can access either in or outside of the classroom. We have found this system to be moderately effective at framing and improving the secure coding mentalities of our students.
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