What is a hackathon?
Hackathons are usually intensive events where teams work to, for example, infiltrate a system in a short period of time. This time around, we were given 24 hours to find as many vulnerabilities as possible in the target system. Due to the short timeframe to succeed, collaboration and sharing of discovered information between the team members is often the key to success and simultaneously, allows the opportunity to learn from other team members.
How was everything running?
During the event, we were allowed to stay at Dipoli through the night and hack for our hearts’ content. The usual consultant fuel, such as coffee and energy drinks, was of course, available the whole time. It was also nice to see other less caffeine-related refreshments served, including five warm meals during the event. We really enjoyed how smoothly everything was run by the organisers.
What was found?
The challenge was hard! We would like to congratulate the challenge partner Ericsson, on the level of hardening they had done to all the targets we had in our challenge scope. During the event, it took over 12 hours for all the participating teams to make any impact on the given target systems. In the end, if we are not mistaken, only a few submissions made it past the triage.
Why would we recommend you participate?
Would we recommend you take part in a hackathon? Absolutely! We had a blast, despite not reaching the top three teams of the target challenge. Next time, we hope that there will be a bigger team and more Solitans with us. These kinds of events truly are unique opportunities, which you cannot get from anywhere else!
PS. Marjana gave some interviews, and they can be found circumventing around the Interwebs.
PPS. Hackathon targets and more information.
