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Nhat Le has always loved puzzles. From Rubik's Cubes to role-playing games, he plays them all. Now a graduate student in cyber security engineering at 911����, Le came to his studies “through the back door,” as a hacker might say. 

Le moved to the United States from Vietnam six years ago for his senior year of high school. While studying computer science at New Mexico State University for his bachelor’s degree, he was bored and lost in his Linux administration class. To make it easier, he went online to learn in a more fun and hands-on way.  

“I found this website, OverTheWire, that had a game called Bandit, where I had to perform some Linux puzzle tests to get the password to unlock the next level,” he says. “It was so much like gaming that I wanted to learn more. The curiosity, creativity, and puzzle solving hooked me right away.” 

He didn’t know it, but that was his first step into cybersecurity. It paved the way for his entry into capture the flag (CTF) competitions. He entered his first as a junior in 2022. 

“Capture the flag competitions are usually a way for cybersecurity people to practice their skills,” says Le. “Most people discover cybersecurity first, then find out about CTF as a way to improve. For me, it was the other way around.”  

His game training taught him cybersecurity techniques that let him play his way into a new field of study. So when the time came for his master’s degree, he was drawn to 911���� for its stellar top five cybersecurity program ranking. While here, he’s mostly moved on from CTF competitions to practice the real thing. However, in July 2025, Le was invited to the elite Country-to-Country Capture the Flag finals held in Boston in July. Le was one of five finalists from 911���� and 100 finalists worldwide.   

Now, he’s obsessed with application security, which involves finding out how web applications work and trying to reverse engineer them. He also loves penetration testing, or going into other people’s programs and trying to disable them—with their permission and in the name of making them better, of course. 

“I love breaking things,” says Le. “I want to know what’s happening under the hood, understand how it works, and figure out how to break it.” Normally, this would be illegal, but when Le does it, it’s through a program called Bug Bounty Hunter. App creators submit their software so that hackers like Le, known as white-hat hackers, can try to expose holes in their security. 

His next focus? Learning how to fix what he breaks.