A friend named Robin has disappeared and a trail of computer puzzles are the only clues. Since the end of March, more than 15,000 middle and high school students have been racing to help the fictional Robin, through the largest hacking competition of its kind, run by Carnegie Mellon University.

The winner, or winning team, receives a $5,000 prize and CMU openly recruits from the top 10 finishers of the competition, known as picoCTF, for its freshman class.

But it’s not just about prestige and money. More broadly, picoCTF is one of several efforts from Carnegie Mellon University to change the face of hacking.

“These aren’t dark arts,” said CMU professor David Brumley, director of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute. “Most people would think of hacking as something bad guys do but what hacking is about is understanding the security and insecurity of systems. The end goal is to make systems more secure.”

Mr. Brumley is well aware that hackers have gained a bad reputation. But that doesn’t mean that those skills shouldn’t be taught, he said.

“One of the things that has happened in the media over time is that people have said ‘hacker’ when they mean ‘criminal,’ and those are really quite separate,” he said in his office at CMU’s CyLab, drinking from a National Security Agency mug that one senses he did not buy at a souvenir shop on the National Mall. “It’s just the same as teaching physics. You don’t have to say, ‘Don’t go off and make nuclear bombs.’ ”

Hacking is taught the same way as anything else, said Mr. Brumley, likening it to teaching fractions or geometry. And it can start as early as elementary school.

The acrobatic hacker

Graduate student Melanie Rich-Wittrig, originally from Dallas, is one of Carnegie Mellon’s most passionate advocates for hacking education. As part of her master’s degree in computer security, she has developed lessons to be used with elementary school students.

“There’s a huge need for professionals and early age ranges are especially important for increasing diversity,” she said. “I’m trying to get people who wouldn’t consider technology to realize they can do it.”

Ms. Rich-Wittrig, a member of CMU’s competitive hacking team and a self-described “white hat hacker,” laughs at the stereotype of the “400-pound hacker” that President Donald Trump described during a presidential debate. She’s female, has bright pink hair and, in her spare time, practices aerial acrobatics hanging from fabric silks she’s rigged up in her apartment.

When she first joined a computer security club as an undergraduate, she was the only woman. She got lost on the way to the meeting and walked in late, only to hear someone joke, “That’s why we don’t allow girls.”

The hacking team at CMU is more diverse, with several women now regulars. It’s her goal to expand it even further.

The picoCTF competition — which is designed and run in large part by CMU students and attracts sponsorship and funding from the likes of Boeing and the National Security Agency — is a big part of that outreach. Although only American high school and middle school students (age 13 and older) can win prizes, anyone can register and compete, with no previous hacking knowledge required. Even a reporter can spend an hour and solve two of the easiest challenges, thanks to trial and error and help from Google, which is allowed under contest rules.

(Not allowed under contest rules: “attacking the scoring server, other teams or machines not explicitly designated as targets”).

Altogether, there are dozens of challenges awaiting the best competitors, who have two weeks, ending Friday, to solve as many as they can.

Changing the perception

Four years ago, Tim Becker was a student at Thomas Jefferson High School in Pleasant Hills who thought he wanted to major in physics in college. A computer teacher there told him about picoCTF and he entered with two friends. The team surprised themselves by coming in third place. “It kicked off an interest in computer security, and I came to CMU as a result,” he said.

Mr. Becker is now a captain of the Plaid Parliament of Pwning, or PPP, CMU’s competitive hacking team.

The team, which formed in 2009, is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, in the world. They have won the DefCon Capture the Flag competition, known as the Super Bowl of hacking, three out of the last four years.

The team funds itself by winning $50,000 to $100,000 per year in high-dollar international hacking competitions in places such as Russia and South Korea.

Seeing how hacking is perceived in other countries deepens Mr. Brumley’s concerns about American moralism toward hacking.

“When I look at other countries I’m a little bit worried that in the U.S. our focus is on criminal activities,” he said. “In South Korea, they treat it as a sport — there’s cash prizes, television coverage. Here we treat it like a black hole.”

That is not to say that Mr. Brumley ignores the possibility that hackers could get mischievous. He does tell his students to consider the consequences of any possible actions. It’s relatively easy for many of his students to break into a webcam, he said, and he asks them to consider whether they would want to take something offline that a mother might be depending on to monitor a sick child.

With high profile attacks against Twitter, massive breaches of consumer privacy and continued news coverage of the role of hacks against the Democratic National Committee in the presidential election, Carnegie Mellon hackers are accustomed to facing questions.

“Even my family would hear about news stories and ask me if I knew the people responsible,” said Mr. Becker, noting that he’s never been tempted to abuse his hacking powers. “There’s plenty of legal ways to exercise those skills and get paid for it,” he said. He’s earned money finding vulnerabilities through “bug bounty” programs at Android and Google Chrome.

With interest in computer security “exploding,” Mr. Brumley said Carnegie Mellon is currently evaluating what exactly the education process should be for its undergraduates.

“These are the people who are going to make the world a safer place,” he said. “I can’t imagine the best way to do that is to put your head in the sand.”

Anya Sostek: asostek@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1308.

(Correction: Published April 9, 2017): An earlier version of this story misidentified the university where Ms. Rich-Wittrig was jokingly told that girls were not allowed to be part of the hacking club.

First Published: April 9, 2017, 4:00 a.m.