All hackers in the Cyber 2.0 International Hackers Challenge fail
With no winner, the NIS 10,000 prize was instead donated to the charity group the "Good Guys Association." However, it will not be the last such challenge.
By AARON REICHA man types into a keyboard during the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.(photo credit: REUTERS/STEVE MARCUS)
The Cyber 2.0 International Hackers Challenge saw thousands of hackers from nations across the world competing in a challenge to hack the company, but all of them failed, Cyber 2.0 announced in a press release.The Rishon Lezion-based cybersecurity company had first announced the challenge at the end of March, with a prize of NIS 10,000, which was held on April 6.The company is known for its Cyber 2.0 solution, which prevents cyberattacks on computers from spreading to organizations.This was the third such challenge the company had hosted, with previous ones having been held in Israel (with NIS 100,000 on the line) and the United States (with $100,000 on the line). The company's willingness to host such contests shows the confidence they have in their system, even claiming that the chance of cracking its system is equivalent to the chance of accurately predicting the weather forecast in 10 years’ time, on any given day, at any given time, for any given place.And it would seem this confidence was warranted. In both previous contests, the hackers – despite including private organizations and even military units – failed to breach the system.However, this third challenge was different, as the goal was not only to show off the effectiveness of their system, but to show its capability of stopping malware from spreading to other computers in an internal network.These challenges are especially important given the current work environment for many businesses, with millions of employees around the world forced to work remotely from home. This causes the vulnerabilities of a given business's internal network to become more apparent and even more of a danger, as the existing systems within the in-office computer might be absent from the computers of those working from home.In the challenge, thousands of hackers were given direct access to an unsecured server within the internal network. They were also given the network design of the challenge, as well as the Admin passwords of all computers. They were not required to bypass firewalls or anti-viruses, and were given direct access to a server within the organizational network like a home-based employee. Only the ability to attack the organization was disabled.Despite how simple this would seem to be, no hacker was able to succeed, and were unable to extract a specified document from the company's computer.AdvertisementWith no winner, the NIS 10,000 prize was instead donated to the charity group the "Good Guys Association." However, it will not be the last such challenge, with the company stating their intentions to continue challenging hackers worldwide.Eytan Halon contributed to this report.
