Ural Federal University’s ‘Hackers’ Team Secures Victory at All-Russian Cyber Exercises
The first all-Russian cyber security competition – Cyber Training Competitions – was completed in Ekaterinburg. The event was held on December 5-7 at the new UrFU campus in Novokoltsovsky as part of the IT Congress and the Forum of the Future exhibition. The competition was attended by 75 students, including students from other cities – St. Petersburg, Orenburg, Tyumen, Magnitogorsk, Kurgan and Novosibirsk.
“Even though the participants were given a complex system – a real, modeled corporate structure – the teams did surprisingly well. The students solved the tasks of searching for vulnerabilities, intrusion, and entrenchment and investigating and proposing defensive measures at a very high level. I am sure that this is a beneficial experience for students of Russian universities, and universities – an opportunity to develop educational technologies in the direction of information security,” says Ilya Obabkov, Director of the UrFU Engineering School of Information Technologies, Telecommunications and Control Systems.
The competition lasted two days: Red Team teams spent the first day looking for vulnerabilities and hacking into simulated infrastructure, while Blue Team teams spent the next day investigating incidents.
The first place was shared by two “red” teams – JiE and vimnano from Ekaterinburg, the second and third places were taken by the “blue” teams – team BB from St. Petersburg and team dQw4w9WgXcQ from Ekaterinburg.
“We liked the event very much: the cyberpolygon was well used and there were many challenging and interesting tasks. For us, just participating in such a competition is a great practical experience that can only be gained in real conditions or at similar events. It would be great if such competitions became a tradition for the university and the city”, the members of the JiE team share their impressions.
The entire infrastructure of the competition was based on the equipment of the Ural SOC Cyber Security Laboratory at the UrFU Engineering School of Information Technologies, Telecommunications and Control Systems. In addition, the students participated in a cyber quiz organized by the Ural Security Operations Center. This allowed the students to challenge themselves as cybersecurity experts by trying on one of three roles: pentester, SOC analyst, and DevSecOps engineer. The interactive game helped the cyber training participants to understand the intricacies of the work of cybersecurity professionals.
“The cool thing is that cybersecurity is a fast-growing field, and specialists in it will be more and more in demand in the market. Moreover, it is the security of our state, our society, and every one of us. So, we can say with confidence – you are doing something that brings value to your loved ones, your business, and ultimately to the country,” comments Valentin Bogdanov, General Director of Ural SOC.