University of North Georgia Triumphs in DOD Hacking Contest

The Mission: Hack High Value Targets' Devices, Apps and Transmit His Location Shaun Waterman • March 26, 2026

A team of cybersecurity students from the University of North Georgia vanquished seven opposing teams from other senior military colleges and elite service academies in an upset victory to win a capture the flag hacking contest staged this week at the National Defense University here.

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The inaugural Cyber Workforce Competition was staged by the Pentagon's CIO office and modelled after the March Madness basketball tournaments, in which division one college teams compete. The "elite eight" cyber teams were paired up at random into a bracket for three rounds of knock out contests, organizers said.

Teams didn't compete directly with each other. Rather, each team raced to fulfill the same objectives in the same simulated computer environment ...