Ethical hackers can win prizes totaling 100,000 euro in DefCamp 2023 competitions and activities

More than 600 teams from over 80 countries have registered for the qualification phase at the largest cybersecurity competition in Central and Eastern Europe

The 13th edition of DefCamp, the most relevant regional cybersecurity conference, which will take place in Bucharest on 23 and 24 November, hosts for the first time ever a live hacking event, where participants will try to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in computer systems in real time. Also, educational activities or Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions are attracting numerous competitors to DefCamp’s Hacking Village, the playground dedicated to cybersecurity education and knowledge development, with total prizes of up to 100,000 euro. In addition, the qualifiers for DefCamp Capture the Flag (D-CTF), the largest CTF competition in the Central and Eastern European region, attracted more than 600 teams from over 80 countries.

For the 2023 edition, the DefCamp conference is preparing to bring together thousands of cybersecurity experts from the region in a space dedicated to interaction and collaboration to support the development of the infosec community.

Furthermore, DefCamp 2023 also strengthens its position as a cybersecurity education facilitator by organizing new activities, challenges, and hacking competitions in the Hacking Village, where a live hacking event will take place for the first time ever. The latter is also a valuable opportunity for security experts to collaborate to identify and even solve security issues, ultimately improving the cybersecurity of the systems being tested.

Moreover, DefCamp attracted 30% more entries to this year’s D-CTF, the competition dedicated to ethical hackers around the world, for which more than 600 teams of ethical hackers and cybersecurity enthusiasts from over 80 countries entered the qualification round. Of these, the top 16 teams are invited to the final that is going to take place live and where participants from Romania, Italy, Norway, Germany, Greece, France, Austria, and Croatia are expected to participate.

“Year after year we strive to provide participants with the right setting for information exchange, collaboration, and networking by bringing some of the most relevant international experts in the field to the conference stages. At the same time, we aim to further develop the cybersecurity knowledge learning and testing playground, Hacking Village, by designing new activities and increasingly stimulating challenges, and bringing together relevant partners. The live hacking event we are hosting this year will certainly be one of the hardest challenges for the participants, but it will also be equally rewarding. Moreover, the substantial number of contestants registering for the DefCamp – Capture the Flag competition confirms that our efforts are well-targeted and that international interest in everything DefCamp and Hacking Village have to offer – both in terms of experience and expertise – remains at a high level”, says Andrei Avadanei, founder of DefCamp.

In a first for DefCamp, this year’s D-CTF finals will consist of a mixed format competition, combining the classic Jeopardy-style CTF, in which each team will have to find solutions to a set of challenges from several security areas, with an Attack and Defense competition. This has a high degree of complexity, giving participants an experience that allows them to explore and improve both offensive and defensive cybersecurity skills.

This year, in addition to D-CTF, DefCamp 2023 participants have the opportunity to compete in 12 other Hacking Village activities. The CyberEDU educational technical platform will host 7 of the 12 activities. Participants will be able to choose from a range of hardware, software, and network hacking challenges, digital forensics, reverse engineering, and more.

Thus, the Hacking Village offers competitors the opportunity to practice cybersecurity in a safe and educational environment. At the same time, there are plenty of activities available for those who want to start a career in application security and DevOps, and the duration of the activities is optimized to allow for testing multiple skills to discover the preferred career direction. Competitors can choose, depending on their experience, from educational activities for beginners, or competitions such as Bug Bounty or Capture the Flag, where prizes reach several thousand euro for top positions.

Cryptographic authentication, vulnerabilities in cloud technology, smart devices and the telecom industry, and the impact of automation in defense strategies, among the topics covered on this year’s DefCamp stage

In addition to organizing Hacking Village competitions, DefCamp is becoming an increasingly relevant event for the industry, with each edition providing a training and development platform for cybersecurity enthusiasts, especially in the context of increasing cyber threats. DefCamp 2023 brings together more than 2,000 participants to attend and contribute to discussions on current issues related to vulnerabilities in information systems.

At the same time, well-known names at DefCamp, such as Chris Kubecka, Advisor on State-Level Cyber Incidents, Cyber Warfare and Cyber Espionage, Tudor Damian, IT Consultant who will explore the changes brought about by the NIS 2 Directive, and Abdullah Joseph, Senior Security Researcher who will explore zero-knowledge authentication protocols, will take on the DefCamp stage together with a series of new speakers. These include Abdullah Al-Sultani (TikTok Product Security Engineer), Arun Mane (Founder and CEO at AMYNASEC LABS), Ta-Lun Yen (Senior Vulnerability Researcher at TXONE NETWORKS), and many others.

More details about the competitions and the list of speakers are available on the official event website.

The DefCamp 2023 event is organized by the Romanian Cyber Security Research Centre Association (CCSIR), powered by Orange Romania. The conference is supported by Bit Sentinel, Booking Holdings, Keysight Technologies Romania, and the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics – ICI Bucharest as Gold partners, Pentest-Tools.com, MSD, TwelveSec, OPSWAT, FORT and Bitdefender as Silver partners, as well as CyberEDU.

About DefCamp

From 2011 to date, DefCamp has succeeded in attracting nearly 11,000 participants from over 55 countries and 150 cities, cybersecurity, ethical hacking, cyber vulnerabilities, and interested in developing their technical skills. DefCamp also provides the environment to strengthen the cybersecurity ecosystem by facilitating collaboration and information exchange between experts in the field. The conference audience includes participants from research and project development (45%), cybersecurity specialists (30%), top management and decision-makers in companies (18%), and students (7%).