“PeriHack”: Designing a Serious Game for Cybersecurity Awareness

This paper describes the design process for the cybersecurity serious game “PeriHack” and, in doing so, it reviews the game by exemplifying its objectives and core game mechanics. Publicly released under a CC (BY-NC-SA) license, PeriHack is a board and card game for two players or teams that simulates the struggle between a red team (attackers) and a blue team (defenders). The game requires players to explore a sample network looking for vulnerabilities and then chain different attacks to exploit possible weaknesses of different nature, which may include both technical and social engineering exploits. At the same time, it also simulates budget level constraints for the blue team by providing limited resources to evaluate and prioritize different critical vulnerabilities. The game is discussed via the lenses of the AGE and 6-11 Frameworks and was primarily designed as a learning tool for college students in the cybersecurity and technology related fields.