Mid East Hackers Challenge offers cash prizes

The 2-day attack-only competition will be held from 4th - 5th April 2007 at the Sheraton Creek Hotel, Dubai and will run concurrently with a technology showcase and dual-track security conference. This will be the second CTF competition to be hosted in the Middle East, with the first game hosted at HITBSecConf2005 - Bahrain.

Unlike the popular attack-and defense game hosted in its Kuala Lumpur conference, the version of the game that will be run in Dubai is an attack only version which sees teams of up to three players race against each other to attack pre-configured servers and target machines. These pre-configured servers mimic real-world applications and installations, such as web servers, email servers, and DNS servers. These machines and applications contain both publicly known and vulnerabilities that have been specifically designed for the game. The teams are free to use whatever technical hacking skills that they have to exploit these vulnerabilities.

During the two-day event, the team that has collected the most flags will be adjudged the winner. The CTF competition and prizes are being sponsored by Malaysian-based SCAN Associates Bhd ("SCAN").

SCAN is Malaysia's premier and trusted Information and Communication Technology (ICT) security solutions provider. It has the distinction of being listed on the Mesdaq market of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) in October 2006. The company has garnered many international accolades since its incorporation in September 2000. Among them are the 2006 Frost and Sullivan Telecoms Award for Managed Security Service Provider of the Year; certified ISO 27001 in Information Security Management System since 2005; and the award of MasterCard Site Data Protection Compliance Certificate in 2005 for its Security Posture Assessment module. Its ICT security research findings have also been acknowledged by Microsoft Inc and US Homeland Security Agency. SCAN is also the developer and operator of the largest Security Operations Centre in South East Asia, covering the monitoring and surveillance of 500 security devices for more than 150 organisations. Currently, the company operates from four different countries, i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

"The CTF creates an avenue for hackers to show their skills in an environment that
is both legal and fun. In addition it allows information security practitioners the opportunity to showcase their security research capabilities and skills to the rest of the world," said Meling Mudin, lead organiser of the CTF competition and a core member of the HITB team.

"This is evident by the number of serious independent security consultants, security research and development companies, and security consulting companies which routinely send their best guys to participate in the Malaysian competition", he added.

Commenting on the CTF sponsorship, Mr Aminuddin Baki Esa, Group Chief Executive Officer of SCAN, said "Our participation in HITBSecConf2007 underlines our commitment to the best brains in network security for the event in Dubai. We are proud to be the main sponsor for the Capture the Flag competition as well as the sponsor for the top three cash prizes in the CTF competition. We hope that the event will help promote greater awareness of the field of network security, which is one of our core ICT security offerings, to the region".

HITBSecConf2007 - Dubai will run for a four-day period from the 2nd till the 5th of April 2007. The event kicks off with two-days of technical training sessions followed by a two-day dual-track security conference, which coincides with a technology showcase and the Capture The Flag competition.

The conference will see over 20 world renowned security researchers and features keynote speakers Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer of F-Secure Corp and Lance Spitzner, Founder of the Honeynet Project. Hypponen will be speaking on "Online Crime and Crime Online" on Day 1 while Spitzner will give attendees an inside look at honeypots in a paper titled "Honeypots: Today and Tomorrow" on Day 2.