Trend Micro hosts its 6th annual ‘Capture the Flag’ competition

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Trend Micro has hosted its 6th annual UAE Capture the Flag (CTF) Competition, which provides hands on experience to nurture the talent of more cybersecurity professionals.

The UAE hosted 10 teams and 24 players. The winning team Alt-Backdoor advanced to the Arab and Africa regional virtual finals, with up to 15 national winners going head-to-head.

Alt-Backdoor were Ababhair, Mohamed Khaled, Rami Altai, and D.P. In 2nd place was Shades, with Mohamed Ammar, Omran Alhosani, Hassan Al Ali and Sultan Murad AlBloushi. In 3rd place was V@Ni$hers, with Murad Smretaeb, Amir Abdella, Gherebrhan Weldit, and H.

The Trend Micro CTF 2020 – Raimund Genes Cup is being run as a fully online event for the first time, including virtual qualifying and final rounds. Teams from around the world are invited to test their skills across several critical areas of cybersecurity, especially those experiencing talent shortages or facing targeted attacks.

“The future of the connected world and digitally powered organizations in the UAE and Arab World rests upon the ability of the cybersecurity industry to defend business-critical data and systems,” said Majd Sinan, Country Manager – UAE, Trend Micro. “However, the corporate attack surface and threat landscape are constantly growing and changing.”

In the UAE and Arab World, Trend Micro held the CTF Competition in partnership with CyberTalents, an online platform that ranks cybersecurity professionals. CyberTalents is running the CTF Competitions to give participants visibility with recruiters, and to act as a bridge between talent and stakeholders across the cybersecurity field in the MENA region.

“Our UAE and Arab Capture the Flag competition helps push back against these trends by empowering talented individuals to strengthen their skill sets in crucial areas,” added Majd Sinan. “We congratulate the UAE’s winning team Alt-Backdoor and give our best wishes to Arab and Africa winners at the Global finals. We also learn a lot from the contestants with how they approach challenges and the tools they use, which helps us stay ahead as defenders.”

The UAE and Arab and Africa CTFs were virtual Jeopardy-style CTFs. For every challenge solved, the team will get a certain amount of points depending on the difficulty of the challenge. The team who got the highest score at the end of the day was the winning team.

This year, the event includes challenges in reverse engineering, forensics/exploitation, open source intelligence (OSINT), mobile, IoT, machine learning, and radio-frequency (RF) systems. RF is featured for the first time after a highly successful engagement with the cybersecurity community in separate Capture the Signal events over the past two years.

Virtual Qualifiers and Finals Events

The virtual Global CTF Finals will take place online on the weekend of December 18.

The winning team from the finals receives 1,000,000 Japanese Yen (approximately $9000 USD). Each player from the winning team will also receive 15,000 Zero Day Initiative Rewards Program points, to help them earn exclusive awards and benefits. The second and third place teams receive 300,000 JPY and 200,000 JPY, approximately $2,600 USD and $1,800 USD respectively.

Hosting competitions like the global CTF is a part of Trend Micro’s approach to supporting the cybersecurity industry skills shortage. The company also recruits and trains new cybersecurity professionals across the globe and builds enhanced automation in its products and services for detection and response, like Trend Micro XDR, to take the pressure off stretched IT security teams.

For more information and to register for the event, please visit: https://www.trenmicro.com/ctf.

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