eCSI Hacker Playground Global Competition Trains, Rewards IT Superheroes

In Conjunction with Black Hat USA 2015, Top International Security Provider Teams With Silent Signal on Hacker Challenge, Offers Prizes Such as a Ticket to BlackHat Europe 2015, MacBook Air, Lego Mindstorms

BalaBit, an IT security innovator specializing in advanced user monitoring technologies and Silent Signal, a leading technology provider of state of the art ethical hacking services, has just launched the eCSI Hacker Playground. The hacker challenge is an online competition open to participants worldwide. It is specially designed for the Black Hat USA 2015 conference in Las Vegas where BalaBit will feature the competition (booth #566). The competition starts at 12:00 am PT on July 31 and lasts until 12:00 am on August 9.

Registration is open now up until the end of the game, 12:00 am PT on August 9.

The game is available globally for penetration testers, IT security experts and all the candidates, who like challenging themselves and would like to learn more about exciting vulnerabilities based on real-life examples. Black Hat USA 2015 conference participants can receive on-site technical support at booth #566 during the exhibition days, August 5-6. eCSI Hacker Playground participants will be challenged with legally committing an eCrime within the framework of the competition to see how successfully they can cover their tracks. Most existing hacking methods and tools are accepted for use, and winners will be chosen based on their speed in getting to the highest privilege level. Special awards are also available for the Best Backdoor solution and National Heroes — those completing the challenge within their native country.

According to BalaBit, in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), most of the population, children of the digital age, are surrounded by technology. Software is everywhere, making life easier and in some cases more difficult, while cybersecurity has become part of our everyday lives. Simply complying with ever increasing security regulations and standards isn’t enough to protect organizations, as we continue to see more data breaches in the headlines than ever before. Organizations have used a wide variety of IT security tools, including firewalls, SIEM’s, IDM’s, IPS/IDS solutions and so on, which sometimes might provide the required level of safety but at the same time hinder their business processes and restrict users to do their job. The globe is calling for IT security superheroes.

“We created the eCSI Hacker Playground to train those IT security superheroes. We see that the most costly cyber attacks are the result of privileged account misuse. Our aim is to train the good guys to protect against the latest, trickiest attacks connected to privileged rights escalation. Security experts that are trained in our hacker playground, however, will know how to act to prevent all of this and can also help us to develop better solutions against future security threats” said Péter Höltzl, senior IT security consultant at BalaBit, the ‘Most Influential IT Security Expert of the Year 2010’ in Hungary.

“While carefully designing the architecture of the increasingly sophisticated levels of the eCSI Hacker Playground, we used real-life examples and cleverly spiced them up. Those who register and try to solve the challenges of four different levels can be sure that they would also survive in such a situation when doing their everyday job,” added Bálint Varga-Perke, IT security expert and co-owner of Silent Signal, the ‘Most Influential IT Security Expert of the Year 2012’ in Hungary.

Players completing all the levels of the eCSI Hacker Playground training will learn skills that will be able to prevent outside attackers from infiltrating corporate users to gain privileged access — which could lead to dire consequences. That is why the organizers are looking for freelance hackers to participate in this training. The eCSI Hacker Playground consists of several different levels, ranging from easy to quite challenging.

Prizes include:

• The prize for the first place is to travel and participate at Black Hat Europe 2015 in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
• The second best wins a 64GB iPad Air 2, the third a Lego Mindstorms EV3 31313.
• Award for the best backdoor solution is a MacBook Air.
• National Heroes — players who reach the highest score first in their respective county — will also be awarded with a special certificate. In certain countries, National Heroes will win an admission ticket to one of the biggest IT Security festivals in Eastern Europe, Hacktivity and accommodation during the conference.

About BalaBit

BalaBit — headquartered in Luxembourg — is a European IT security innovator and a leading provider of advanced user monitoring technologies. It has sales offices in BeNeLux, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and partners in more than 40 countries. Its main development centers are located in Hungary. BalaBit has customers all over the world, including 23 Fortune 100 companies.

BalaBit’s new IT security concept — Contextual Security Intelligence (eCSI) — enables companies to use real-time analyzed monitoring information in security decisions, to increase business efficiency instead of over-controlling their users. BalaBit’s eCSI product portfolio uniquely covers key IT security needs including reliable Log Management, Privileged User Monitoring and User Behavior Analytics.

BalaBit, founded in 2000, has long track record as the developer of syslog-ng, the most popular open source log management tool with more than a million corporate users worldwide.

About Silent Signal

Silent Signal is an independent information security company providing state of the art ethical hacking services. Its helps its customers recognizing the threats endangering their business, identify vulnerabilities affecting their systems and plan their defense strategy to protect their most valuable assets.Silent Signal is headquartered in Budapest Hungary, having clients from the financial, telco, government and industry sector from 30 countries.