On November 3, in Hanoi, twelve finalists competed in the 2019 ASEAN Student Contest on Information Security, from North, Central and South Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand. The ISITDTU and ISITDTU2 teams from DTU, the best from Central Vietnam, reaffirmed their strength, taking a third prize and a ranked fourth in the list.
Thai Truong Duy (second, left) of the ISITDTU team receiving a third prize
The contest has been held in Vietnam for many years, but this time the Vietnam Information Security Association teamed up with the ICT Department and the Authority of Information Security to expand the 12th one into the ASEAN region, bringing in five teams from Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand, selected by the Information Security associations of their respective countries. As a result, the Vietnamese teams worked harder and were more focused, as the foreign competitors were very strong, with many different, unique and creative competitive skills.
With one server configured with all the necessary function to search for and exploit the vulnerabilities in the opponent servers, teams competed in games of attack and defense. The aim was to encourage the maximum resilience and interaction in dealing with situations and attacks. The organizers added three additional sections (jeopardy) to the contest, as in Capture the Flag (CTF), in order to increase the difficulty and to step up the pressure.
Mr. Nguyen Kim Tuan (middle) poses foe a picture with 2 DTU teams
With 227,963 points, the ISITDTU team overcame several teams from the Academy of Cryptography Techniques, the Hanoi University of Science & Technology, the People's Security Academy and others from Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar to win third prize. Aftern winning the Central Vietnam preliminaries, ISITDTU impressed the other finalists by topping the leaderboard throughout the contest. The ISITDTU2 team ranked fourth.
Just ∫du It! (VNU University of Engineering and Technology) won first prize, z3r0_night (FPT University, Hanoi) and UIT-BEAN (VNU-HCM University of Information Technology) all came second and Nupakachi (Hanoi University of Science & Technology), KMA PeBois (Academy of Cryptography Techniques), ISITDTU (DTU), and Thailand all gained third prizes.
“Over the last seven years, DTU Information Security students have always been the leaders in Central Vietnam and the Central Highlands,” explained Mr. Nguyen Kim Tuan, Director of the School of Network Engineering in the Faculty of Information Technology. “They have a continuous record of winning big prizes, such as a second prize at the 2018 VNPT SecAthon, a third and fourth prize at the 2018 National Student Contest on Information Security, a fourth at the 2018 MastesCTF8 and third at the 2019 ASEAN Student Contest on Information Security”.
“The DTU information security team is currently the best in Vietnam and in the top 40 worldwide on the CTFTime global Information Security contest ranking. To achieve these successes, students gain a basic knowledge of Network Engineering and Security from their very first year. In addition to hiring highly experienced lecturers, DTU also focuses on investing in an open lab network, where students can practice network attack and defense in real time. The university has continually strived to educate a highly-trained workforce to turn Vietnam into the regional center of expertize in Network Security.”
Thai Truong Duy, from Network Engineering and member of the ISITDTU team, said, “The 2019 contest is an excellent way for us to practice, offering us the chance to meet others, compete and improve our vital vulnerability detection and information security skills, while maintaining network continuity in the face of external attacks. This prize gives us additional motivation to strive and work even harder, to remain confident and to win big prizes in upcoming International Information Security contests.”
(Media Center)