Scoring Trek: The Next Generation

February 19th, 2007 3 Comments »

Well, our scoring engine is being used, it had its first trial by fire this weekend at a competition.  I’m still waiting to hear on the results.  One thing that became painfully obvious throughout all this is the state of disrepair the web frameworks of python are in.  So, we’ve decided to move it to ruby and ruby on rails for the next version, for next year.  With out last iteration called ScorchedPy, I was toying with new "clever" names for a scoring engine in ruby.  The best I could come up with is Scuby.  Anyone have any ideas?

Also, I discovered something painfully this weekend.  Be gentle on your hands, programmers.  They’re your tools.  I bowled this weekend and attempted a new technique.  That wasn’t such a hot idea.  So today I have a sore arm and typing isn’t very pleasant.  We’ll see how it all goes tomorrow.

Fun With Scoring Engines

January 22nd, 2007 1 Comment »

Ok, so I’ve been developing an application for the past few months with one of my old instructors, Mike Masino. The application is called ScorchedPy and can be found here. It’s a scoring engine for a network security competition. What is a network security competition, you ask? Well, it’s a competition where teams from different schools fight to defend their networks against hackers (aka Red Team) in a controlled environment. You have to score the teams somehow, and the previous solution left much to be desired. So, we stepped in to fill that gap. The application is in two parts, one that does the actual testing of network services and the other acts as a front-end. Both sections are written in python using the following technologies/libraries:

  • Turbogears - A web framework for python
  • Amara - An XML library
  • SQLObject
  • SQLAlchemy
  • MySQL
  • Various network service libraries
  • Subversion for source code management
  • Trac for wikiliciousness and changesets
  • And VMWare for deploying at the moment

We attempted as much as possible to follow a MVC design and so far it is working well. I just finished the generation of scores and the rest is being tidied up. Check it out and let me know what ya think. Warning: If you ask for an installer we will laugh at you. Seriously, we will. A VM should be available for download soon.