The “Olympics of hacking” “Capture the Flag” competition, which brings together some of the greatest in the world, was won by a team of hackers from two North American institutions.
The few dozen hackers competing in the challenge sat slumped over laptops form Friday through Sunday during in the DEF CON security conference that hosts the event in the carpeted ballroom of one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas.The winning team, Maple Mallard Magistrates, consisted of members from Carnegie Mellon University, its alumni, and the University of British Columbia.
The challenge entails breaking into specially created software that was created by the competition organisers. Participants must defend themselves against hackers from other participants in addition to finding faults in the programme.
Visitors from South Korea, China, India, Taiwan, Japan, and Taiwan were among the hackers, who were primarily young men and women. Others were college students, while some worked for his respective governments, commercial businesses, or both.
The DEF CON CTF competition enables top hackers to interact while their nations may be conducting cyber espionage against one another.
Instead of money, prestige is the prize. Giovanni Vigna, a competitor and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claimed that “no other competition has the clout of this one.” And everyone stays out of politics.
