APU students excel in Regional Cyber Challenge

• A total of 12 teams from nine countries took part in the virtual competition
• Team Shellhound and team Et3rnal emerged as the top scorers

TWO teams from Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) emerged as the top winners of the Regional Cyber Challenge 2019.

The Regional Cyber Challenge 2019, organised by the Silensec and Cyber8Lab Pty Ltd, Australia, was held in conjunction with the annual Australian Information Security Association (AISA) Perth Conference.

A total of 12 teams from nine countries took part in the virtual competition, which took place over five hours.

All teams had to make use of their Incident Response skills to detect, respond and recover from cyber-attacks towards the virtual infrastructure. All teams went through the challenges of overcoming security vulnerabilities throughout the duration of their competition, where their technical skills and mental durability were both tested.

Team Shellhound and team Et3rnal emerged as the top scorers who successfully secured most of their virtual infrastructures from cyber-attacks launched over the five hours. They emerged as the champion and 1st runner up respectively.

Team Shellhound comprised Imran Esack Dawoodjee, Sritaran Doraisamy and Mohin Paramasivam whereas Team Et3rnal was made up of Hains Jojo, Reza Ahmad Nugroho and Farzan Mohammed. All of them are under the Cyber-Security, Information Systems Security and Information & Communications Technology (ICT) programmes at APU.

“The RCC2019 was a competition that was challenging, intriguing as we stretched our learning abilities to the maximum. The real-life nature of the competition pushed us over the limits and it was a great learning experience for all of us. I’m glad that we succeeded as the top team at this competition,” said Dawoodjee, the captain of Team Shellhound.

A prize giving ceremony took place in APU’s campus located in Technology Park Malaysia, Bukit Jalil. Daisy Sinclair, founder of Cyber8Lab Pty Ltd, Australia, attended the ceremony. She described the competition as a “complex and intense one, with challenging analytical questions and tasks waiting for participants to complete”. “Teams Shellhound and Et3rnal have demonstrated impressive skills that brought them to the top,” said Sinclair.

“Over the past one year, we have taken our cyber-security agenda to the next level. We are appreciative of the academicians who are passionate and dedicated, as well as the students who have done so well at this challenge. This is certainly a valuable experience for our cyber-security students to becoming more marketable,” said Prof Dr Ir Vinesh Thiruchelvam, deputy vice chancellor cum chief innovation officer of APU.