On the evening of June 25th, the 11th WhiteHat Contest, which tests competitors’ knowledge of network security, finished, after 8 hours of fierce competition. Vietnamese teams took first, second and third places.
The contest is organized quarterly by the WhiteHat.vn forum for devotees of network security.
As usual, contestants competed online to play the WhiteHat Wargame, at wargame.whitehat.vn, to capture-the-flag (CTF) in Jeopardy format. The contest requires a specialized knowledge of computer security, based on a cyberwar game, focusing on the skills of attacking and defendingthe contestants’ computer networks. This method is commonly used in information security contests. During the game, teams must access the host server and solve challenges in the five areas of Web Vuln (web vulnerabilities), Reverse (decompiling), Pwnable (exploiting software vulnerabilities), Forensics (digital investigation), and Crypto (cryptography).
This was the second time that the contest was open to international teams. The 11th WhiteHat Contest attracted 227 teams from South Korea, Japan, Russia, Poland, the US, China and elsewhere. Teams included those with high CTFTime rankings (a global website ranking of network security teams), such as p4 and the Dragon Sector. However, three Vietnamese teams, BabyPhD, MeePwn, and ISITDTU outperformed all the others.
The three winners of 11th WhiteHat Contest
With 1,400 points, the BabyPhD team won a first prize of 30 million vnd. With 1,000 and 800 points respectively, the MeePwn and ISITDTU team came second, with 5 million vnd and third with 3 million.
Only 60 of the 227 teamscored points. The BabyPhD team made the strongest impression, scoring points followingthe GardaDeFier team from Romania and dcua from the Ukraine. They then led continuously from around noon until the end, leaving the second team 400 points behind, managing to stay safely ahead throughout the contest.
The BabyPhD team were already very familiar with the WhiteHat Contest and WhiteHat Grand Prix (a global network security contest organized annually by Bkav.rep.). They were ranked 20 thin the CTFTime rankings. In 2014 they finished 6th out of 195.
Speaking with ICTnews about the quality of the teams, Mr. Ngo Tuan Anh, Vice-Chairman ofNetwork Security at Bkav explained that the 11thWhiteHat Contest was led by top teams in the CTFTime rankings, such as dcua (in 1stposition) and p4 (in 4th position).
He said: “The contest was thrilling. In addition to BabyPhD leading throughout the contest, the other two Vietnamese teams ISITDTU and MeePwn unexpectedly went ahead, almost at the end, edging out dcua and HACK (from South Korea) to finally come in second and third.”
(Media Center)