Axians sponsors the mHACKeroni team

Axians will be a partner of the CINI National Cybersecurity Laboratory, at the World Conference on Cybersecurity in Las Vegas which will take place from 10th to 12th August, to support the Italian team mHACKeroni.

The DEF WITH CTF in Las Vegas

Now in its 26th edition, it is the most prestigious and well-known Cybersecurity conference in the world, also mentioned by numerous successful films and TV series, such as The X-Files, The Signal and the recent Mr. Robot.

mHACKeroni TEAM

The Ethical hacker team was born from 4 universities: University of Milan, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, La Sapienza University of Rome and University of Padua.

The mHACKeroni are among the best Italian students and researchers in Cybersecurity, and the participation of each is essential to be able to compete with rival teams, also of similar size.

During the qualifying in May, mHACKeroni, 40 young hackers, finished second out of 586 teams. It is a historic result and the best placement obtained in the qualifications of the DEF WITH CTF by an Italian team.

The competition: capture the flag

The race takes place in attack and defense mode: 8 people from each team play in the main arena while a larger group collaborates remotely, typically from a suite of the hotel where the competition takes place, to analyze the vulnerabilities of the systems to be exploited for the capture of new “flags”.

“A Capture The Flag is a real competition on IT security issues – underlines Francesco Palmarini – PhD student at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and member of the mHACKeroni team. Participants compete in teams to identify realistic security issues in complex applications created ad-hoc by the organizers. The aim of the game is to exploit these problems to read sensitive data (the so-called “flags”) and at the same time defend against attacks from opposing teams.

“For years we have been training our best talents to compete in this competition – Marco Squarcina, researcher at the Cà Foscari University and member of mHACKeroni – which lasts 3 days. You need security skills, problem solving skills and an ability to think outside the box. It is not enough to be numerous, you need a strong component of improvisation, an ability to interpret and know how to adapt the architecture to the new operating methods and above all you need to divide the tasks and avoid overlapping.

Axians and cybersecurity

“We are proud to be able to contribute to the growth of young Italians who can train themselves to defend and guarantee the country’s cyber security in the future – underlines Massimo Fanelli, General Manager of the Cybersecurity BU of Axians Italia.