Finalists for EC-Council Foundation's 2019 Global Cyberlympics Announced

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Sept. 9, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The elimination round of EC-Council Foundation's worldwide hacking competition, Global Cyberlympics, was held Saturday, September 7 and the top two finalists from each region are invited to attend the finals in the Region of Durham. The elimination round was a grueling, 12-hour test of hacking skills played at the same time around the world.

This year's competition included but weren't limited to teams from Deloitte, IBM, Grant Thornton LLP, EY, KPN, the National Bank of Egypt, Accenture, and PwC. Global Cyberlympics players also represented 18 universities and colleges from around the world. The top two teams from each region are invited to play in the in-person finals to be held October 26th in Oshawa, Canada. The teams advancing to the finals are:

North America
1st Place - BisonSquad
2nd Place – 4N0M3LY

South America
1st Place – H3x Pr0ph3ts
2nd Place – Bad Bounty

Asia
1st Place – Bit Thugs
2nd Place – No signal

Australia
1st Place – Scr1pts0nTh3Barb1e
2nd Place - TSS

Europe
1st Place – MapleL33ts
2nd Place – Jobless Hackers

Africa
1st Place – W1ld60yz
2nd Place – Hackwaba Cybersec

Each year, the champion from the previous year automatically qualifies to return and defend their title. The 2018 Champions were a team called Sector C from The Netherlands. This year, since the finals will be hosted in Canada, the top scoring Canadian team will also be invited to the finals to represent Canada. The top scoring Canadian team from the semifinals was YegSec.

The finals will be held in partnership with Canadian company siberX. SiberX is a roaming, customized platform for training, events, and skills development and host of CISO Forum Canada. There is an incredible amount of enthusiasm for the games in the Durham Region, with all 7 cities that make up the region participating in various ways to ensure the 2019 finals are the biggest and best yet. Previous world Finals for the Games have been held in Barcelona, Spain; Washington, DC; Atlanta, GA; and The Hague, Netherlands, making this the first Cyberlympics to be held in Canada.

The Finals will be held at Durham College in Oshawa and the awards ceremony will be hosted at the Special Events Center in Ajax.

Events like Cyberlympics provide a consequence-free environment for professionals to push their skills to the limits. Within the confines of the game, players can experiment with creative approaches to problems they may face in the real fight against cyber criminals. In fact, cyber games require players to try new tools, new techniques, and attacks with a high degree of risk if they hope to win. The best games build challenges that teams have not encountered before, going well beyond capture the flag (CTF) type of events that are common at conferences and online.

Year after year, the Cyberlympics challenges presented to the teams who make the finals are unexpected and impossible to train for. Teams have to rely on their skills and hope their instincts guide them to right solution. For instance, the 2018 Cyberlympics finals started with a set of challenges in a box. The challenges spanned from old school forensics to hacking a Bluetooth lock. What's was in the box? A plethora of network and building diagrams, a dossier, magazine for some light reading, a Bluetooth dongle, UV light, USB thumb drive and a shredded document.

Teams were required to reassemble their shredded document to retrieve a t0k3n that was left behind. Next, teams needed to determine which printer the dossier came from and where it was located on the network using the UV light and "yellow dot forensics." Then, without touching the Bluetooth lock, they had to open it using only their computer, a PCAP file and Bluetooth dongle.

Teams that successfully opened the lock were required to demonstrate the methods used in order to receive the networking gear which would get them access to the game board. From there, teams saw challenges ranging from network packet analysis, system exploitation, reverse engineering, malware analysis, digital forensics and of course plenty of physical challenges! Visit https://www.cyberlympics.org/ for competition information.

About EC-Council Foundation
EC-Council Foundation is a 501c3 charitable and educational organization dedicated to educating and training individuals in cyber security. Established in 2012 by EC-Council, the foundation seeks to raise awareness, build capacity across nations and ultimately unify global cyber defense. EC-Council Foundation is the creator and organizer of Global CyberLympics, Hacker Halted, TakeDownCon, The Global CISO Form and Live.Learn.Secure., an education and training program. For more information regarding EC-Council Foundation or any of its programs, visit foundation.eccouncil.org.

SOURCE EC-Council