Participants of the Austria Cyber Security Challenge
The AustriaCyberSecurityChallenge - ACSC is Austria's largest "hacker competition" - in which young talents - but also experienced IT security specialists - put their skills and abilities to the test.
On 1 April 2022, 17 different tasks had to be solved in 8 hours at the double final, which not only required excellent technical qualifications but also creativity, endurance and above all a high degree of frustration resistance. 68 finalists, consisting of the best pupils and students as well as the most successful Austrian security specialists, competed against each other for the medals and top positions. They were able to prevail against more than 500 competitors in the qualifications of the last two years.
In addition to reverse engineering, binary exploitation, OSINT, web security, programming, cryptography, forensics, networking, wireless & radio hacking and steganography tasks, there was also a challenging hardware challenge to solve. Depending on the level of difficulty, the finalists only had a set amount of time to solve the challenge. The more difficult the task, the more points the teams had to win.
The CSA – CyberSecurityAustria, together with the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Ministry of Defence, the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the Federal Ministry of Digitalisation and Economics and the Austrian Bundesrechenzentrum (Federal Computing Centre), organised the Austria CyberSecurityChallenge for the tenth time this year.
As a long-standing partner, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology was also on board again. At the AIT Center for Digital Safety & Security, more than 200 experts are working on key technologies of digitalisation in order to build the most modern information and communication technologies in an energy-efficient, highly secure and reliable manner and utilise them in accordance with demand. Thanks to the special know-how at AIT, Austria is internationally recognised as a high-tech location for cyber security. Due to its many years of experience in the field of digital security, AIT has established itself in this area as a responsible partner for the relevant national authorities and as a recognised institution for cyber security in the European research landscape.
"We are therefore always on the lookout for natural and information science based talents who are enthusiastic to play a committed role in shaping a secure digital future. For this reason, supporting young talent initiatives such as the AustriaCyberSecurityChallenge is a special priority for us," says Helmut Leopold, Head of Center for Digital Safety & Security.
- Further information on the winners can be found here.
- Information about career opportunities at AIT can be found here.