International cyberbattle champions crowned at hack fest in Moscow
A multinational team of cybersecurity experts called DreamTeam has triumphed in the Standoff 15 cyberbattle as part of the Positive Hack Days (PHDays Fest) festival in Moscow.
The third iteration of the annual PHDays Fest was held at the Russian capital's Luzhniki Olympic Complex from Thursday to Saturday, attracting thousands of visitors from Russia and over 40 countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
This year's event focused on the growing role of technology in daily life. The program featured more than 500 speakers, including top Russian officials and senior figures from domestic tech and infrastructure firms.
One of the main highlights of the festival was the Standoff 15 competition for cybersecurity professionals, in which more than 40 teams from 18 countries – including France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Serbia, Vietnam, Tunisia, Oman, and the UAE – fought for a prize pool of $50,000.
Red Teams of white hackers – experts who use their hacking skills to identify security vulnerabilities in hardware, software, or networks – had to score points by breaching the infrastructure of a simulated virtual country in areas such as metallurgy, energy, oil and gas, banking, urban environment, aviation, and logistics.
The Blue Teams of cybersecurity specialists had to investigate and mitigate those hacks.
The main prize of $20,000 eventually went to DreamTeam, which scored 195,388 points. FR13NDS & RHACKERS (127,466 points) and Dataeli&only_f4st (103,870 points) took second and third places, respectively. This marks the seventh victory in the Standoff for DreamTeam since it was established in 2019.
'The teams will be able to apply the experience gained in the cyberbattle to protect their companies in their daily work,' the organizers of the PHDays Fest said in a statement.
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