DEF CON Hacker Tournament Brings Together World’s Best in Las Vegas

A staff of hackers from two North American universities gained the “Capture the Flag” championship, a contest seen because the “Olympics of hacking,” which attracts collectively a few of the world’s greatest within the area. In the carpeted ballroom of one of many largest casinos in Las Vegas, the few dozen hackers competing within the problem sat hunched over laptops from Friday via Sunday in the course of the DEF CON safety convention that hosts the occasion. The profitable staff, known as Maple Mallard Magistrates, included contributors from Carnegie Mellon University, its alumni, and the University of British Columbia.

The contest entails breaking into custom-built software program designed by the match organisers. Participants should not solely discover bugs in this system but in addition defend themselves from hacks coming from different rivals.

The hackers, largely younger women and men, included guests from China, India, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Some labored for his or her respective governments, some for personal companies and others had been faculty college students.

While their international locations could also be engaged in cyber espionage towards each other, the DEF CON CTF contest permits elite hackers to return collectively within the spirit of sport.

The reward is just not cash, however status. “No other competition has the clout of this one,” stated Giovanni Vigna, a participant who teaches on the University of California in Santa Barbara. “And everybody leaves politics at home.”

“You will simply discover a participant right here going to a different who could also be from a so-called enemy nation to say ‘you probably did a tremendous job, an unbelievable hack.'”

The game has taken on new meaning in recent years as cybersecurity has been elevated as a national security priority by the United States, its allies and rivals. Over the last 10 years, the cybersecurity industry has boomed in value as hacking technology has evolved.

Winning the title is a lifelong badge of honour, said Aaditya Purani, a participant who works as an engineer at electric car maker Tesla Inc.

This year’s contest was broadcast for the first time on YouTube, with accompanying live commentary in the style of televised sports.

DEF CON itself, which began as a meetup of a few hundred hackers in the late 1990s, was organised across four casinos this year and drew a crowd of more than 30,000, according to organising staff.

On Saturday afternoon, participants at the “Capture the Flag” contest sat typing into their laptops as conference attendees streamed in and out of the room to watch. Some participants took their meals at the tables, munching on hamburgers and fries with their eyes fixed on screens.

Seungbeom Han, a systems engineer at Samsung Electronics, who was part of a South Korean team, said it was his first time at the contest and it had been an honour to qualify.

The competition was intense and sitting for eight hours a day at the chairs was not easy. They did take bathroom breaks, he said with a laugh, “however they’re a waste of time.”

© Thomson Reuters 2022