EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published in GCU Magazine, available in the purple bins across campus or digitally.
Photos by Ralph Freso
As a kid, computers were Alex Hoffman’s toys.
Nothing has changed.
The Grand Canyon University IT/cybersecurity junior is one in an army of IT and cybersecurity professionals, professors, sometimes gamers and students, like Hoffman, locked in on their laptops.
They’re click-click-clicking away on their keyboards, focused on building HACKnet, the hackable, gamified network that’s the special sauce of the university’s soon-to-debut cyber residence hall.
GCU’s College of Engineering and Technology announced in the spring it would roll out a living-learning community for cyber students in fall 2025 that will occupy part of Encanto Apartments.
HACKnet is the sandbox they will play in.
And Hoffman is hyped to help build it.
***
Associate Dean of Technology Dr. Pam Rowland and Grand Canyon Education Chief Information Security Officer Mike Manrod were at a dinner when talk turned to the idea of a residence hall for cyber students.
The notion had come around before.
Industry leaders emphasized how vital hands-on experiences are for cyber students.
“This has been an ongoing theme for years, and the rollout of us getting to this point is through all those years of conversations,” said Rowland.
That hands-on emphasis stems back to 2019 with the debut of the Cyber Center of Excellence, a cyber range where students practice live-fire cybersecurity skills in a controlled environment.
The cyber residence – part of GCU’s Overclock Experience, an immersive cyber environment that also includes HACKnet and the cyber range – extends those opportunities to Encanto.
“Why not have a 24/7 learning environment where they can practice on their own time?” Rowland said of HACKnet, which stands for Heuristics Accelerating Cyber Knowledge.
GCU’s cyber leaders believe once HACKnet launches, it will be unparalleled.
Classical cyber training tends to be like the 8-bit video games we all played as kids (where you can only move left or right) ... But we want HACKnet to be more like Minecraft, like the open-world game where you can define any infinite possible paths through the environment.
Mike Manrod, GCU adjunct professor and GCE chief information security officer
“After a lot of conversations, both on the private sector and government side, it looks like what we are building is truly unique – at least of the learning environments that are public knowledge,” Manrod said.
The team of 30 is engineering a dedicated network students are encouraged to hack in learning to fight cybercriminals.
But it’s hard to do in a real-world setting.
“A lot of tools they use, let’s say for reconnaissance, or for vulnerability scanning … if you were to do those on the LOPES network, it would get flagged by our Security Operations Center team,” cyber range student worker Viviana Pacheco said.
Students can access those same tools on hackable, virtual machines with intentionally built-in vulnerabilities and know they won’t get shut down.
Manrod envisions HACKnet as this dynamic cyber training environment.
“Classical cyber training tends to be like the 8-bit video games we all played as kids,” where you can only move left or right, he said. “But we want HACKnet to be more like Minecraft, like the open-world game where you can define any infinite possible paths through the environment.”
The only way to do that is to build a world that mimics a real company or entity’s interconnected networks and systems.
Students can try to break into these simulated environments, and if in Encanto, can do so at 2 a.m. or whenever.
HACKnet designers have developed a capture-the-flag competition with “Jeopardy”-style challenges, and there’s talk of rewards yet to be worked out and a leaderboard, too.
“It’s turning it into more of a video game, because a lot of IT and cyber students are gamers,” said cybersecurity major George Argeris, student technical team lead.
HACKnet will consist of easy, medium and hard zones with accessible and inaccessible areas, just like a real company or city would have.
The easy zone will have vulnerabilities that have not been patched, or updated, to take away those vulnerabilities; the medium zone will have harder-to-crack areas.
But if students find vulnerabilities on the hard network – things to be fixed from a corporate standpoint – faculty will help them write a report on how they compromised the system.
“It means something those students can parlay into a job,” said David Richards, executive director of the Cyber Center of Excellence, an adjunct professor and a HACKnet team leader.
The hard level?
“It’s essentially going to be almost impossible to crack,” Pacheco said.
***
Argeris is building an impossible-to-crack challenge (if a student hacks it, “I want to know who it is,” he said, smiling).
Even more impossible to him is the chance to build a legacy alongside his professors.
“Being a part of this is my way of giving back. A few professors are like mentors to me, so I want to sort of be like a mentor to somebody else.”
Richards said it was always part of the conversation to include students in the project.
“What’s really going to make you a good professional is what you do outside the classroom,” he said. “… For student workers, it’s a chance for them to get experience. A lot of them are working with IT and IT security professionals they wouldn’t normally have access to.”
“It’s an absolutely special experience,” added cybersecurity senior Bennett Jax, who’s working on a HACKnet easy-level guide for those new to hacking. “It’s a privilege to be a part of this.”
Allie Urbaszewski – she’s helping the tech team document its work – said many organizations would have tried to build this just using full-time staff. So for students to be included and have something to show employers is incredible.
“I’m learning SO much just by seeing what everybody is working on and seeing all this documentation.”
As for Hoffman, playing on advanced software, like Linux, “that’s what I’m having fun with.” That “Minecraft” mindset of building anything you can imagine? He’s running with it.
“You’re given almost complete freedom. I can choose what I want to build and do it all from scratch, so I’ve gone far deeper than I would have just in class.”
Like it was when he was a kid, computers are still his toys.
But Rowland and Manrod see the bigger picture – the industry shortage, the increasing cyberattacks, the need to cultivate talent to fight those attacks.
“It’s teaching ethical skills in a controlled environment and helping our students understand the importance of (cybersecurity) protection,” Rowland said. “That’s what this is about.”
***
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