WarGames.MY 2011: First Malaysian Online 'Hacker Challenge' Sees Over 30 Teams in 'Battle'

Online, July 4, 2011 (Newswire.com) - KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - WarGames.MY 2011, Malaysia's first online Capture The Flag (CTF) competition, recently held on the 2nd July 2011, saw Malaysian hackers battle for fame and fortune during the 24 hours event. The competition attracted as many as 99 teams signing up for the competition however only 30 teams actually competed for the cash prize of RM2000, sponsored by System Defenders Sdn. Bhd, complimentary passes to HITBSecConf2011 - Malaysia, sponsored by Hack In The Box. Sdn. Bhd. and most importantly, the fame and glory of being crowned champions in Malaysia's first online CTF competition!

The contest tested participants in 6 different categories - reverse engineering, cryptography, network security, digital forensics, web application security and general puzzles. Featuring a total of 18 challenges, at the stroke of midnight MYT, the first two levels, Forensics100 and Binary100 were released.

In the Binary100 challenge, the teams had to apply their reverse engineering skills in order to understand the inner workings of a piece of software, while in the forensics challenge, teams had to perform 'real world' investigations involving recovering files and other important information. The remaining level 100 challenges were Crypto100, Net100, Web100, and Puzzle100, each awarding 100 points per solution. The level of difficulty of a challenge also increases according the amount of points it carries.

At the 12 hour / mid point mark, a total of 11 challenges had been released with as many as 6 solved by participating teams and it was a close battle between early leaders team kueytiow and team p03p0wn throughout. At the stroke of midnight on 28th July 2011, the score sever was brought down signaling the end of the game.

To be crowned champions required a team to complete at least one challenge from each category, however as there weren't any teams who did, no winners were officially declared. As many as 15 challenges were released during the competition with team kueytiow finishing at 1st place, team p03p0wn finishing in 2nd place and team permaban finishing in 3rd. Fourteen teams actually scored points out of the 34 teams that officially participated.

"WarGames.MY is a good platform for encouraging the proliferation of hacking skills among Malaysians, in a controlled, ethical manner", said the sole member of team kueytiow. "Overall, the game is quite challenging but at the same time, very entertaining. I would like to join it every month!", he added.

Team p03p0wn actually came close to knocking Kueytiow down to second place, however they were not able to solve the web100 challenge in time. "It was a really good game. We really liked the binaries and cryptography challenges and we would definitely participate again", they said.

Echoing their sentiment, third place finishers, team permaban added "It was a great game. It was systematic and we loved all of the challenges, it gave us lots of new information regarding IT security".

"It was good to see Malaysian hackers taking part in the first online CTF! We spotted some great talent especially in the area of reverse engineering and overall the teams did great", said RuFI0, team leader of The Sexy Kambingz (TSK), co-organizers of Wargames.my 2011.

"Due to the overwhelming response from the local hackers, you can count that there'll be another WarGames.MY next year. After a few years, we have plans of making the competition a global event. That way our local hackers can compete with the rest of the world", said RuFI0 when asked about next year's plans.

"On behalf of the organizing committee, I would also like to thank our sponsors, System Defenders Sdn. Bhd. for the cash prizes and Hack In The Box Sdn. Bhd. for the training and conference passes", he added.

"Organizing a CTF always involves a lot of work and stress, but we get satisfaction out of it knowing that participants had fun and enjoyed it!", added Riaf, a member of The Sexy Kambingz (TSK).

A security meet up is planned at Hackerspace KL on the 26th of July 2011 to discuss the challenges and solutions to Wargames.MY. For more information about WarGames.MY and Hackerspace KL, please see:

http://hackerspace.my
http://wargames.my
http://twitter.com/hackerspacekl
http://twitter.com/wargamesmy