Hack In The Box celebrates a decade of security conferences
Last week’s Hack In The Box Security Conference saw the return of over 40 of the most popular speakers from the last decade presenting in a triple track format over 2 days.
Security insights into Huawei routers, a last minute non appearance by founders of The Pirate Bay, a live streamed iOS security panel comprising members of the world famous jailbreak “Dream Team’ and USD60,000 awarded for a successful bypass of Google’s Chrome browser resulted in Hack In The Box “trending’ on Twitter not only in Malaysia but also in the Netherlands and Australia – truly putting Malaysia on the map and once again re-establishing HITBSecConf as a network security event well worth attending.
This year’s nuclear war inspired Capture The Flag hacking game saw hotly contested battles with Japanese Team Sutegoma2 eventually retaining their title for another year and walking away with the USD3133.7 in cash. The second place winner was Team LOL from Vietnam and in third was Team Nandy Narwhals which comprised of university students from Singapore.
“It’s always fun to watch the Vietnamese go head-to-head with the Japanese every year,” said Amin Hamid, Founder of Stryke Labs and organiser of the 2012 competition. “I’d also like to thank Trustwave SpiderLabs and PandaLabs for sponsoring and also being part of the game.”
At this year’s Mozilla HackWEEKDAY hackathon, strong entrants saw many developer teams finishing compelling proof of concepts after the 36 hour period. With competition stiff, the judges deliberated in length to decide the ultimate winning entry – DICOM-WAVE, a project that utilizes Microsoft Kinect as a controller to translate gestures for surgeons to view MRI images. Malaysian developer Firdaus Abhar Ali walked away with USD1,337 for “Most L33t Coder’, courtesy of Mozilla Corporation. In traditional hacker spirit, all source code from submitted projects have been made available on Github for download.
After 2 days of hacker battles, security exploitation and mitigation discussions, the conference ended with the HITB Charity Auction which raised a staggering MYR23,980 for Mount Miriam’s Needy Cancer Patient Fund. Featuring HITB auctioneer Roberto Preatoni who returned to Malaysia specifically to run the auction, enthusiastic bidders saw generous sums being raised for donated items including a one-of-a-kind Microsoft custom-designed XBox 360, the Pwnium 2 team laptop and JailBreak Dream Team signed Apple accessories. However the undisputed auction highlight was certainly when Katie Moussouris, Senior Security Strategist for Microsoft Corporation challenged Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure to cut off his iconic ponytail for charity.
“There is a super special place in all our hearts for Katie and Mikko. Their extremely generous donation to the charity auction this year is indescribable and the team and I cannot thank them enough. Much love also to all our donors who put up some very special items for us this year and of course our bidders, for their support in raising funds for Mount Miriam’s Needy Cancer Patients Fund”, said Dhillon Kannabhiran, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Hack In The Box.