Sri Lankan team enters Global CyberLympics

Sri Lankan team 'WhiteHat', having survived stiff competition from regional giants from the Asia Pacific region, entered the Global CyberLympics world finals to be held in Miami, Florida in October.

The Global CyberLympics is a not-for-profit initiative of the EC-Council Foundation supported by the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Its goal is to raise awareness towards increased education and ethics in information security through a series of cyber competitions that encompass forensics, ethical hacking and defence.

The mission statement of the Global CyberLympics is "Unifying Global Cyber Defence through the Games."

The regional qualifying rounds of the competition were conducted in North America, Europe, Africa, South America, Middle-East and the Asia Pacific. The Sri Lankan team came out on top in the Asia Pacific region to reach the finals.

The Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team | Coordination Centre (CERT|CC), was instrumental in recognising local Information Security skills by selecting the team WhiteHat for the competition.

CERT|CC a fully owned subsidiary of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and the National Centre for Cyber Security in Sri Lanka, did so after a stringent selection process. The sponsor for the team was the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL). TRCSL contributed immensely to the success of the team by providing the necessary connectivity infrastructure and other facilities and logistics for the team members to participate in the CyberLympics.

The six-member Sri Lankan team comprised: Sri Lanka CERT Information Security Engineers Roshan Chandraguptha (Team Captain) and Kanishka Yapa, Millennium IT Senior Systems Engineer (Information Security) Dharshin De Silva, Information Security / Forensics Consultant, Chathura Abeydeera, LankaCom Services (Pvt.) Ltd Information Security Engineer, Buddhika Niroshan and IFS R&D Limited Trainee Systems Engineer Nimantha Wickremasinghe. Each of these individuals with their unique skill sets contributed to the collective success of the team. The journey to the world final was not an easy one for the Asian Finalists "WhiteHat" as there was intense competition in all three rounds that they faced in order to qualify for the final.

The previous three stages were based on Forensics, Penetration Testing and Computer Network Defence. The final round is called Capture the Flag (CTF).

This is an exercise which permits participants to use available network assessment tools to be able to compromise and control a series of target hosts. Once a host is controlled, that participant is required to defend that host against other participants. Participants are required to protect the targets they control, while maintaining their critical services.

The team with the highest overall score will be crowned the World Champions, and win the Global CyberLympics World Finals Security Challenge competition.