What the Hack 'Capture The Flag'
February 4, 2020
The What the Hack Capture the Flag challenge is a 4-day competition between two teams of students from The Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia, and Spain. The Red team must hack their way into capturing the “flags” while the Blue team must find ways to protect them. The challenges illustrated in the competition are mainly based on real-world incidents which will give students an opportunity to experience how it actually happens as well as prepare them with strong hands-on experiences. The contest promises to bring lots of hacking techniques, problem-solving skills required challenges.
Guest Lecture
Fabian de Wit, who is Security Officer at the Accell Group in Heerenveen and Security-lecturer at Friesland College, started by sharing some details of his workload. He showed the diversity of vulnerabilities of ICT infrastructure and, off course, how the secure the system against unwanted visitors. The next lecture was giving by Sander Veenstra, a forensic expert at Department of Justice & Safety in North-Netherlands, he told an impressive story on the amount of (digital) attacks criminals force on the civil population. It's quite scary to see that the 'old school' burglars are transforming their business model to hacking in order to gain money.The Juice Shop
The next day was all about the Juice Shop; an online web-application to discover all sorts of vulnerabilities. And on top of that it is presented in a competitive environment. So, all the teams from Belgium, Spain, Estonia and Holland were very keen on having a good start. Students from Estonia and Spain were spot on with their knowledge and experience. But during the challenge the Dutch students came along side and managed to win the competition by just a few points difference. At the end of the day the vulnerabilities were discussed with all participants and feedback was given on several issues in the Juice Shop. The students were very enthusiastic about the Capture the Flag Challenge, and although they preferred to see each other live, everyone would join again in the near future.Check out the aftermovie: