ICT Security-Sécurité PC et Internet

On the 7th of November, young European white hat hackers will meet at Düsseldorf to measure their skills in attacking and defending computer systems.

During the 2nd European Cyber Security Challenge, participants will have to discover vulnerabilities in web applications, binaries and document files, solve crypto puzzles and hack hardware systems. However, technical skills are just one part of the whole story. As the time and resources will be limited, teamwork skills are also extremely important. The competition will end with a presentation by each team. The complete skillset which is important for working in an IT security team, is thus tested.

They're part of a competition sponsored by the U.S. Military, which will give the winner $2 million.

In order to be selected as the winner, a team's systems must autonomously create network defenses, deploy patches and mitigations, monitor the network, and evaluate the defenses of competitors. It's a tall order, but the competitors are formidable, including one team that completed the first round in just six hours.

The teams hail from around the world; there's no citizenship requirement even though the competition is funded by the U.S. military. Among them are professors and students from UC Berkeley and the University of Idaho, as well as a group of French, British, and American security researchers who met as students at UC Santa Barbara.