SANReN is hosting its second Cyber Security Challenge during the CHPC National Meeting 2018 at the Century City Conference Centre in Cape Town from the 02 to 06 December 2018. The Challenge is currently in full swing and competition between teams is rife.

The current ranking at 15h20 on 03 December 2018. Team MisJUDged is in the lead.

The purpose of the competition is to stimulate interest in Cyber Security in the field of network security within South African Tertiary institutions. Thus, the competition is aimed at university students who are interested in information security fields such as penetration testing, incident response, digital forensics and security training. During the competition students will be exposed to real cyber related threats.

Due to the high interest among students the competition was split into two rounds. In the first, qualifying round, students competed for placement and a chance to compete in the final round at the hosted event in Cape Town. Of the over 200 students from over ten universities that sought a place in the final round, only 40 were placed.

Which one of these teams will be crowned the winner?

• misjudged – BRICS Champions
• Down Town Cookie Factory – University of Pretoria
• Wits Hacky Sac – University of the Witwatersrand
• PUK3 – North West University
• GGEZ – University of the Western Cape
• Mirai – Rhodes University
• Bit Phase – Stellenbosch University
• Bureau 122 – University of Cape Town
• NUST4 – Namibia University of Science and Technology
• Cyber Nerds – University of Botswana

Much appreciation goes to our Cyber Security Challenge 2018 Sponsors

 

 

 

For more information see Cyber Security Challenge 2018

During 2017 the South African National Research Network (SANReN) initiated the Cyber Security Games project which was aimed at establishing the hosting of an information security student competition with an emphasis on network security. This resulted in the first Cyber Security Challenge 2017 being hosted at the CHPC National Conference 2017.

Building on the success and high interest of the Cyber Security Challenge 2017, SANReN is preparing to host the Cyber Security Challenge 2018 at the CHPC National Conference 2018.

See the final results of the Cyber Security Challenge 2017.

Details of the Cyber Security Challenge 2018 can be found at: https://cybersecuritychallenge.ac.za/

Watch this space for details of when the participant registration portal is open and SANReN is accepting registrations for this years challenge.

During 2017 the South African National Research Network (SANReN) initiated the Cyber Security Games project which was aimed at establishing the hosting of an information security student competition with an emphasis on network security.

The project was conceptualised to create a platform for students to compete in real-time during the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) National Conference 2017. The real-time competition will consist of the following:

• The challenge will test the problem-solving skills of participating teams by requiring them to complete tasks in penetration testing, incident response, digital forensics and cryptography;
• An attack/defence system for team vs team battles. The systems used consists of dedicated pre-configured hardware and software. In the attack/defence competition, the teams have to hack each other, but also fix vulnerabilities in their own applications (by means of source code changes); and
• Independently manned scoring system.

Due to the high interest received from students, the competition has been split into two rounds.

During the first round, students competed for positions to compete in the final round to be hosted at the CHPC National Conference 2017. Over one hundred students from seven universities competed in the first round that was hosted during October 2017.

For the first round, the students had to solve network security problems and identify security issues such as:

• Decrypting Passwords;
• Geo-locating pictures;
• Solving password hashes;
• Securing Web sites;
• Finding information from TCP traffic; and
• Extracting weak security keys.

From the first round only 32 students comprising eight teams have been placed to compete in the second and final round that will span four days from the 3rd to 6th December 2017.

Dr Renier van Heerden, project manager for the Cyber Security Games project had the following to say ”The Cyber Security Games expose students to an environment where they are confronted by real-time cyber adversaries. They have to adapt their theoretical information security knowledge to keep systems secure in real time. Additionally, they can also learn how bad guys attack networks in order to better defend cyber infrastructure in the future.”

Overall the Cybersecurity Challenge aims to stimulate interest in information and cyber security with computer networks by presenting students with challenges that replicate real-world scenarios.

This challenge was initiated by the SANReN Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) as part of its mission to reduce information security incidents in South Africa particularly through awareness and training activities. For more information on other CSIRT initiatives please visit https://csirt.sanren.ac.za.

The eventual aim is to be able to sponsor the winning student team to compete at an appropriate international competition, such as the European Cyber Security Challenge.

For more information about the Cyber Security Challenge 2017 please contact: csc@sanren.ac.za