Global hacker competition challenges penetration testers

More than 500 players have registered for an exciting global online hacker challenge taking place this week during Black Hat USA 2015 and DEF CON.

Organized by BalaBit, best known for its syslog-ng open source log management solution, and Silent Signal, a provider of ethical hacking services, the eCSI Hacker Playground offers great prizes, including a trip to Black Hat Amsterdam and a MacBook Air.

The game is available globally for penetration testers, IT security experts and all the candidates, who like challenging themselves and would like to learn more about exciting vulnerabilities based on real-life examples.

The challenge consists of four increasingly difficult levels, based on both Linux and Windows platforms. Hacking the target machines requires remote exploitation to achieve low privilege access and also local privilege escalation to gain full control over the machines.

“The eCSI Hacker Playground has a special prize for the Best Backdoor Solution, so players not only have to demonstrate their intrusion skills but also their abilities to remain persistent,” Balint Varga-Perke, co-owner and IT security expert at Silent Signal told Help Net Security. “In order to achieve the maximum score players must demonstrate their skills, including but not limited to web application attacks, OS internals, programming and reverse engineering”, he concluded.

“Our aim is to train the good guys to protect against the latest, trickiest attacks connected to privileged rights escalation. Security experts that are trained in our hacker playground, however, will know how to act to prevent all of this and can also help us to develop better solutions against future security threats,” said Peter Holtzl, senior IT security consultant at BalaBit.