10 ASEAN countries participate in ASEAN Students with Information Security 2023 competition

The Vietnam Information Security Association (VNISA) has just announced the latest information about the contest "ASEAN Students with Information Security 2023".

The 2023 competition is the 16th time it has been held in Vietnam and the 5th time it has been open to ASEAN students. The competition is hosted by the Vietnam Information Security Association (VNISA), in coordination with the Department of Information Technology ( Ministry of Education and Training ) and the Department of Information Security, Department of International Cooperation (Ministry of Information and Communications), under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC).

In its 16th year and the fifth time it has been opened to students from other ASEAN countries, the “ASEAN Students in Information Security 2023” competition will for the first time feature students from 10 ASEAN countries.

This year’s competition consists of two rounds: the Kick-off and the Final. Previously, in the Kick-off round held on October 7, 233 teams with a total of nearly 1,000 contestants from 63 universities and colleges of 10 ASEAN member countries competed online.

Of these, Vietnam has 157 teams from 33 universities; 9 other ASEAN countries have 66 teams from 30 universities participating. Notably, this year's competition attracted many leading universities from other ASEAN countries such as the National University of Singapore, Universiti Sains Malaysia, ITS Institute of Technology Indonesia and for the first time, Philippine students participated.

The exam content includes Pwnable (exploiting software errors), Reverse engineering (focusing on software source code reverse engineering skills, software protection methods); Web (techniques to attack web applications); Crypto/ACM (decoding puzzles, attacking encryption algorithms, using programming/algorithm skills to solve games, mazes...).

At the end of the Kick-off round, 162 out of 233 teams scored, including 1 foreign team and 5 Vietnamese student teams that solved all the challenges. Heroes Cyber Security team from ITS Indonesia was the team that finished the test the fastest. Most of the 61 teams that did not score were teams from schools that were participating in the competition for the first time.

The new point of the "ASEAN Students with Information Security 2023" competition is that after the Kick-off round, all qualified teams will participate in the Final round, without having to go through the Preliminary round like previous years.

The representative of the Organizing Committee said that the Final round of this year's competition will be a competition between 80 Vietnamese student teams and 35 student teams from 9 other ASEAN countries.

Students from 9 other ASEAN countries will compete online under the supervision of the Organizing Committee and the Jury. Meanwhile, Vietnamese student teams will compete in 2 locations: Hanoi (including schools from Da Nang to the North) and Ho Chi Minh City (including schools from Da Nang to the South).

This year, the Final Round will not be divided into groups, but will be scored and ranked based on the total number of teams. Contestants will take an online practical exam on information security, mainly in the form of confrontation, attack and defense on computer networks.

As an activity within the framework of the series of events "Vietnam Information Security Day" in 2023, the contest "Students with Information Security 2023" aims to raise awareness and responsibility for information security in highereducation and training institutions; at the same time, promote the movement of research, study, experience exchange, and updating modern technology knowledge in the field of information security.

The contest also contributes to the effective implementation of the projects "Propaganda to raise awareness and disseminate knowledge about information security in the period 2021 - 2025" and "Training and developing human resources for information security in the period 2021 - 2025", approved by the Prime Minister in November 2020 and January 2021.

In addition, the Competition also aims to discover talents in the field of information security, promote the training of highly qualified human resources in information security and create a playground to enhance the ability to exchange and share knowledge of students from universities and technical academies in ASEAN countries./.

Source