HITBSecConf’s Capture The Flag challenge: ‘Let's play Global Thermonuclear War’
By Digital News Asia September 20, 2012
- Experts to prove their skills in grueling network security game
- 10 teams from all over Asia to compete for US$3133.7 in cash and bragging rights
THE Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITBSecConf), which attracts the world’s leading security professionals every year and is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2012, has expanded its popular Capture The Flag (CTF) live hacking competition (pic).
The CTF challenge pits teams of three in a head-to-head 32-hour battle to not only prove their skills amongst their peers but gain the bragging rights of having competed in one of the most grueling network security 'games' around, HITB said in a statement.
At this year’s conference, to be held in Kuala Lumpur from Oct 8-11, the CTF challenge -- dubbed Fallout Apocalypse -- will see teams attacking rivals’ ‘nuclear power plants’ while at the same time defending their own from incoming attacks.
Teams will own and manage nuclear power plants which consist of seven reactor cores. Each reactor core represents a custom vulnerable service which generates ‘money’ from the production of nuclear energy. Teams will need to hack into their rivals' nuclear facility and disrupt the core reactors to prevent their rivals from generating money, which also represents their total points.
An animated world map will be used to visualize attacks and other events to give spectators an idea of what is going on during the challenge. Fallout Apocalypse will also feature a ‘black market’ where teams can auction off exploits to the highest bidder and also purchase upgrades made available by the CTF Crew.
“We are really looking forward to seeing the creative attacks and strategies from teams and also the alliances which will be formed and broken. It’s like watching a game of Risk, but with real-world hacking involved,” said Amin ‘RuFI0’ Hamid, HITB CTF Overlord 2.0 and CEO of StrykeLabs, the main organizers of this year’s competition.
"This is also the first time we’re collaborating with the previous and current HITB CTF crews and we’re excited to be working with them in putting together an amazing game,” he added.
To be held in an open-to-the-public area of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur where HITBSecConf2012 is taking place, the CTF competition kicks off at 10.30am Malaysian time on Oct 10 and ends at 5.30pm on Oct 11.
Fallout Apocalypse is organized by StrykeLabs and sponsored by Trustwave Spiderlabs. A US$3133.7 cash prize for the first place team has been provided by Panda Security, while HITB will be providing custom collectible ‘biatch&dawg’ hoodies and t-shirts as prizes for the second and third place winners.
For more information on HITBSecConf2012 and the Capture The Flag competition, visit http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2012kul/ or follow @hitbsecconf on Twitter. The hashtag for the event is #HITB2012KUL.
Digital News Asia is amongst the supporting media for the conference.
Earlier Stories:
HITB celebrates 10yrs of hosting world’s leading security researchers
Google offers US$2 million in bug hunt competition to be hosted in KL
