Terp Tech Warriors: How “RandomHackers” are Dominating the Global Cybersecurity Circuit

The members of RandomHackers stand outside of J.M. Patterson on the University of Maryland campus

In the digital equivalent of a buzzer beater, a team of University of Maryland graduate engineering students recently proved that when it comes to cybersecurity, the Terps are in a league of their own.

On March 27, the team known as RandomHackers, all students pursuing a Master of Engineering in Cybersecurity through Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering (MAGE) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, clinched the national title at Hack the Madness, a high-octane, March Madness-style "Capture the Flag" (CTF) bracket. Outmaneuvering 63 other university teams including Ivy League rivals, the squad demonstrated the surgical precision and late-night grit that has become a hallmark of Maryland’s graduate engineering community.

From the National Championship to the Global Tournament

The victory was a collective triumph for the full roster: Abhijeet Kumar, Srihari N. Narayan, Joshua Alwin, Dyanesh Swaminathan, Narasimha Tiruveedula, Manish Kumar Upadhyayula, Akshay Anand, and Jnana Ramakrishna Chodisetti.

But for this group, a national title was just the warm-up. Less than a month later, over April 18 and 19, a two-member cell of the team (Kumar and Tiruveedula) took on the Global Ynov Partners CTF, an international gauntlet featuring elite squads from Singapore to France. Operating as a duo against teams boasting 13 or more members, they solved all 38 technical challenges to secure first place on the global scoreboard.

“The key was focusing on the hard challenges first,” says team leader Abhijeet Kumar. “Everyone can solve the easy ones, but the harder ones decide the competition.”

Successful Collaborations Win Championships

To manage the chaos, the team transforms Discord into a virtual war room, using voice channels on Discord to divide and conquer vulnerabilities in real-time.

“Without collaboration, we couldn’t do it,” adds Narasimha Tiruveedula. “Even when we’re working on different challenges, vulnerabilities overlap. If someone solves something, they immediately jump into another call to help the rest of us.”

Practical Skills, Immediate Impact: The MAGE Advantage

The dominance of RandomHackers is a direct result of the unique ecosystem at MAGE. As the practice-oriented graduate education arm of the Clark School, MAGE is specifically designed to transform technical students into industry leaders.

Unlike traditional research-heavy tracks, the Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) and Graduate Certificate in Engineering (GCEN) in Cybersecurity at MAGE focus on immediate, next-day applications.

This practitioner-first mindset is forged in the classrooms of the J.M. Patterson Building, and one of those classes is ENPM634: Penetration Testing. Faculty advisor Michael Wittner, who teaches the course this semester, is a prime example of the MAGE faculty model: an expert instructor who brings real-world industry experience directly into the classroom.

Competitions Prove Workforce Readiness

Wittner says CTF competitions are the ultimate proving ground for the skills he teaches.

“It is an amazing achievement,” Wittner says. “They had to learn a lot of new skills along the way, including cyber skills and team building. These competitions are one of the best ways for students to get hands-on experience prior to joining the workforce.”

A Pipeline for the "Cyber Capital"

For the university, the success of the RandomHackers is a point of strategic pride. MAGE’s flexible curriculum, which offers both on-campus and 100% online options, allows working engineers and full-time students alike to dive deep into areas like cloud engineering, robotics, software engineering, and AI for engineering applications.

“They aren't just competing in a game—they are demonstrating that they are ready to defend our digital borders.”

Link Clark, Bugcrowd program manager

Reflecting MAGE’s Core Mission

George Syrmos, assistant dean for continuing education, sees the team’s success as a reflection of the program’s core mission:

"The extraordinary success of team RandomHackers is a definitive reflection of our mission at Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering. We aim to do more than just teach; we provide a hands-on learning environment where students bridge the gap between advanced academic theory and immediate, real-world utility. Watching these students evolve from the classroom to the top of international leaderboards—and then into defending our state’s own infrastructure—is exactly why we built this program.

“We aren’t just educating engineers; we are cultivating the next generation of security leaders."

Beyond Academics: Supporting Maryland’s Digital Defense

The stakes for RandomHackers, however, extend far beyond trophies. Through the Maryland Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) on the Bugcrowd platform, team members are applying their MAGE-honed skills to live government infrastructure. Kumar recently identified a vulnerability, which he reported to the state of Maryland.

“It was an intense learning experience regarding ethical boundaries and responsible reporting,” Kumar says.

Winning Praise from the State’s Cybersecurity Officials

This real-world impact has caught the attention of the state’s top cybersecurity officials.

James Saunders, Maryland state chief information security officer, says the team's performance reinforces Maryland's status as the "cyber capital of the nation."

Link Clark, a program manager at Bugcrowd, agrees: “They aren't just competing in a game—they are demonstrating that they are ready to defend our digital borders.”

Maryland’s Next Generation of Digital Defense

To ensure these students are ready for the front lines, they work closely with Steven Kain, the state’s director of advisory emulation, to turn competition-level exploits into ironclad defenses.

“CTFs build the muscle memory you can turn around and apply immediately, and in this case, that work makes our state safer,” says Kain. “They're also a chance for students and researchers to reclaim the original meaning of 'hacker'—someone who becomes such a subject matter expert in a system that they can bend it in ways it wasn't intended to go, and then articulate how to fix it for the greater good.”

With a trophy case that already includes first-place finishes at the BugCrowd Student CTF, BSidesNYC AI CTF, and The Diana Initiative DEFCON33 CTF, RandomHackers is quickly becoming a dynasty.

As they prepare for their next challenge, with another local competition on the horizon, the message from College Park is clear: the next generation of digital defenders isn't just coming.

They’re already here, and they’re winning.

Published May 4, 2026