This year’s Cyber Challenge, run by the University of Waikato, attracted a wide range of participants from around the country with participants attending from schools and tertiary institutions as well as industry.
The youngest competitor was just twelve-years-old!
As a longtime sponsor of the event, Endace this year decided to enter three teams in the challenge.
Teams participated in a series of challenges, including capture-the-flag challenges and a drone challenge. Endace team, Team Dark Arts (consisting of Deepak Ramaprasad, Leo Liu and Dr. Andreas Löf) took line honours after Rounds 1 and 2, taking out the prize for the winning team for Rounds 1 and 2.
Team Dark Arts donated their prize to the runners-up after Rounds 1 and 2, Team Arcton (Jeremy Symon and Grady Hooker, another industry team). Which then graciously donated the prize to the third-placed team, Team Purple (James Donaldson and Tom Crisp), another industry team.
However overall glory, and bragging rights for 2018, fell to Team Elliptic Curveballs (Jacob Cheatley, Michael Jang and Logan Krippner – all University of Waikato computer science students). Congratulations guys!
Associate Professor, Dr. Ryan Ko, Head of Cyber Security Lab and Director, New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science, said this year’s Cyber Challenge was the toughest yet.
“The standard of competitors keeps getting higher, but we’re also creating more challenging tasks. It speaks well for the future cybersecurity landscape, and the University of Waikato,” Dr. Ko said.
Congratulations to all the participants in this year’s Cyber Challenge, and our thanks to the team at the University of Waikato for hosting the event.
And to all the Endace participants, from all the teams: “well done, you did us proud!”