BSUIR cybersecurity day: students put IT-protection of companies to the test
On June 3, the first local cybersecurity tournament Cybersecurity Day was held among the students of the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. It was organized by the Hi-Tech Park resident company hoster.by and BSUIR. 40 participants of the tournament solved practical tasks related to web vulnerabilities, attacks, cryptography, steganography and other aspects of information security.
Specialists of the hoster.by cybersecurity center specially for students built a cyberpolygon - a virtual site simulating the real infrastructure of a modern company. Like the absolute majority of real infrastructures, which include a website, mail servers, web applications, it contained a number of vulnerabilities. The tournament followed the Capture the Flag (CTF) format, a competition where players must find and capture a "flag" hidden in the system. Such tournaments help develop skills in finding vulnerabilities and fixing them. Participants had to find weaknesses and hack as many elements as possible. The speed of passing the cyberpolygon was also assessed.
"When the word "hacker" is mentioned, the image of a criminal immediately comes to mind. But it is important to realize that there is a huge number of "white" or "ethical" hackers, whose task and even profession is to search for vulnerabilities in order to eliminate them and improve system security," - says Sergey Povalishev, CEO of hoster.by. - The world's best digital fraudsters and defenders have a very similar set of knowledge and skills, but they work on different sides of the barricades. It is important for us that as many young people as possible choose the right side and get inspired by interesting, prestigious and highly demanded professions related to information security in the world".
The jury of the tournament consisted of the representatives of BSUIR and cybersecurity center hoster.by. CTF-competitions assume participation of specialists of any level and specialization. So in BSUIR Cybersecurity Day students of 1-3 courses from different faculties fought equally. Third-year students Vladimir Velikovich, Alexander Efimchik and Andrei Zelkovsky took the prize places.
The company hoster.by (Reliable Programs) has been a Hi-Tech Park resident since 2019. It is a registrar of national domains .BY and .BEL, provider of hosting, cloud solutions and information security services, the first certified commercial cybersecurity center in Belarus.
