The annual International Information Security Competition is organized by the Swiss network security incident response organization, SCRT Information Security, and is structured along the lines of the Capture the Flag (CTF) model. Sixty teams competed this year in the finals, twenty from universities in the US, France, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan and so on, and forty from international security companies.
Coming first in Vietnam in the qualifying rounds, and 53rd out of 800 teams internationally on January 16th and 17th and by coming 4th Vietnam in the CTFTime ranking, was a launch pad for the DTU-ISIT to become the only Vietnamese team to reach this year’s finals in the International Information Security contest.
DTU was the only team from Vietnam to reach the 2016 finals
For ten hours teams had to answer questions on (1) Encryption analysis, (2) Reverse-engineering software, (3) Digital investigation, (4) Exposing network bugs, and (5) Network attacks. Simulations were based on recent vulnerabilities in information storage systems and computer networks, and required contestants to solve and fix them.
Combining their expert knowledge with intelligent and creative solutions, the DTU-ISIT team, the only one from Vietnam, beat teams from the US, South-Korea, Taiwan and others to finish 4th out of twenty teams from well-known international universities. Overall, DTU finished 17th when teams from global security companies were included.
When the final round had began, the ISIT–DTU team, Tran Nhu Minh, Vo Viet Tung, Ho The Thien, and Nguyen Tan Phat, quickly scored their first points. They often rose to third and even first position for many hours continuously, with 27,850 points. However, there were only four of them instead of eight, which limited their ability to relieve each other by taking turns. At the end of the contest, the DTU-ISIT team had scored 33,050 points, impressing the judges and earning fourth place among the twenty university teams and 17th overall out of the 60 teams in the final round.
The DTU-ISIT team held first place for several hours
Vo Viet Tung of K18 TMT said: “We did well in the contest because of our efforts and the strong support of DTU. They allowed us to train in the Information Warfare labs, with their comprehensive and modern equipment, including firewalls, IDS/IPS, web servers and so on. We were able to learn from Vietnamese experts. Our DTU lecturers provided teaching and guidance throughout our training and practice time and helped us grasp the details on security, network attacks and response, internet safety, information encryption, web privacy and so on. They exposed us to real-time security vulnerabilities and we gained much invaluable experience. Then we could confidently enter the contest.”
The DTU Information Security team has since improved its position in the CTFTime rankings. They are now third in Vietnam and 29th globally:
(Media Center)