Two Nigerian teams of cyber security professionals from a group called the Naija SecForce have emerged African Champions in Global Cyberlympics – the Olympics for cybersecurity professionals and ethical hackers around the world.
NaijaSecForce and Ek0pwn3rs came first and second and are to represent the continent on the global stage. Both teams also made it to the top 12 position in the world in the online qualifying round of the competition, having solved all the challenges from the pre-qualifying round.
Global Cyberlympics is an hands-on cyber security team competition that brings together the best ethical hackers from around the world to compete in a series of challenges such as forensics, penetration testing, cryptography, malware analysis – capture the flag challenges.
This year’s competition was full of intrigues as the participants were given hardened systems to break into and other complex tasks to complete within 12 hours. They defeated teams from other nations and the African region, such as Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Sudan and Ghana to get the top spot.
Judgment was based on the speed at which systems were hacked, the number of vulnerabilities found, challenges solved or flags found and the techniques used to uncover and exploit them.
NaijaSecForce team is made up of Rotimi Akinyele (Team Captain), Oluwaeseun Oyelude (PwC Nigeria), Funmipe Olofinlade (eSentry Systems Ltd), Eyitemi Egbejule (Python Software Foundation Fellow), Shuaib Oladigbolu (Ladoke Akintola University of Technology) and Rajesh TV (ENCODE).
Ek0pwn3rs has in its team: Abimbola Jaiyeola (Team Captain), Chinedu Onwukike (IBM, Canada), Chidi Obum (Cyberinfocts), Olalekan Ismail (Ladoke Akintola University of Technology), Oladipupo Oyediji (PhynxLabs) and Adetutu Ogunsowo (Digital Jewels Ltd).
Both teams are to represent the continent at the finals, scheduled for September 13 in Atlanta, United States of America (USA).
They will be competing with the winners from other continents and top cybersecurity professionals across the globe.