Mid East hackers challenge offers $6,000 in cash prizes

Hack In The Box announced that it will be hosting a Capture the Flag (“CTF”) hacking competition during the upcoming HITBSecConf2007 with USD6,000 in cash prizes up for grabs. 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. In addition to being crowned regional champions for the competition, winners will also walk away with cold hard cash! First place winners will win USD3,000 cash, the 2nd place USD2,000 and USD1,000 for the team which comes in third. The CTF competition and prizes are being sponsored by Malaysian-based SCAN Associates Bhd (“SCAN”).