DEFCON 19 CTF Final. Team IV took 4th place
The other day, two major hacking conferences ended: BlackHat 2011 and DEFCON 19, which took place in Vegas.
In addition to reports, the most famous hacker (whitehat) competitions Capture The Flag (CTF) are held annually at the DEFCON conference. DEFCON is a kind of alma mater of these competitions.
Competitions are held in two stages. The first, qualifying stage, in which everyone who wishes can participate. Preliminaries are held in the format “Own game” (or “Jeopardy” in English). Participants are provided with 25-30 tasks of varying complexity in such areas of information security as reverse engineering, forensic, binary exploitation, packet analysis, etc. In Russia, this type of competition is often called Task-based CTF.
The second, the final itself, which goes 10-12 best teams. The final is held in the format of "combat" hacking. Each team is given an image of the OS on which several services are running. The team must protect their services and attack others. Each service stores flags that need to be stolen during an attack and accordingly protected during protection. Hence the name Capture The Flag.
This year, more than 700 teams registered in the qualifiers, with more than 280 completed with a non-zero score.
For the first time in the history of these competitions (and this is the 19th consecutive conference) the Russian team “IV” reached the final. The name reads as “four” or “four,” although foreigners “enviously call us” “ah vi”. The name came about very simply, the team consists of 4 of Russia's strongest CTF teams: HackerDom, Leet More, SiBears, Smoked Chicken. Ironically, our team took 4th place in the qualifiers and reached the final.
But we decided not to stop there, and even though the American visa legislation has crippled half of the team, we won in the finals, guess what? Namely 4th place, overtaking many of the watchmen of this competition. Our team was ahead of such bison as Shellphish from the University of Santa Barbara (every year they hold an iCTF competition), PPP from Carnegie Mellon University and PLUS Koreans from POSTECH-Pohang, as well as Japanese, Spanish and American pros in IB.
PS
Well, they had a great meal, of course. This is Vegas, baby.
In addition to reports, the most famous hacker (whitehat) competitions Capture The Flag (CTF) are held annually at the DEFCON conference. DEFCON is a kind of alma mater of these competitions.
Competitions are held in two stages. The first, qualifying stage, in which everyone who wishes can participate. Preliminaries are held in the format “Own game” (or “Jeopardy” in English). Participants are provided with 25-30 tasks of varying complexity in such areas of information security as reverse engineering, forensic, binary exploitation, packet analysis, etc. In Russia, this type of competition is often called Task-based CTF.
The second, the final itself, which goes 10-12 best teams. The final is held in the format of "combat" hacking. Each team is given an image of the OS on which several services are running. The team must protect their services and attack others. Each service stores flags that need to be stolen during an attack and accordingly protected during protection. Hence the name Capture The Flag.
This year, more than 700 teams registered in the qualifiers, with more than 280 completed with a non-zero score.
For the first time in the history of these competitions (and this is the 19th consecutive conference) the Russian team “IV” reached the final. The name reads as “four” or “four,” although foreigners “enviously call us” “ah vi”. The name came about very simply, the team consists of 4 of Russia's strongest CTF teams: HackerDom, Leet More, SiBears, Smoked Chicken. Ironically, our team took 4th place in the qualifiers and reached the final.
But we decided not to stop there, and even though the American visa legislation has crippled half of the team, we won in the finals, guess what? Namely 4th place, overtaking many of the watchmen of this competition. Our team was ahead of such bison as Shellphish from the University of Santa Barbara (every year they hold an iCTF competition), PPP from Carnegie Mellon University and PLUS Koreans from POSTECH-Pohang, as well as Japanese, Spanish and American pros in IB.
PS
Well, they had a great meal, of course. This is Vegas, baby.