Guardians Competition

Guardians

Status| Active
Genre| Hacker Competition
Frequency| Annual
Location(s)| Bratislava, Slovakia
Established| 2017
Participants| 636
Website| https://www.guardians.sk

Guardians is an annual blue-team Capture the Flag online competition, held in Slovakia. It Is designed to test the skills of Digital Forensics, Incident Response, and Threat Hunting in a realistic, competitive setting.[1]

The list of participants regularly includes cyber security enthusiasts and members of incident response teams from both the private and public sectors. The assignment for the participants – Guardians is to defend the environment from a series of hacker attacks. Throughout the competition, every team member is given specific tasks with increasing difficulty, ranging from reverse engineering, and steganography to forensic analysis and application exploit.[1]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Previous Rounds
* 3 Media Coverage
* 4 Similar Competitions
* 5 References

## History

The competition is organized by Binary Confidence, a leading Slovak provider of managed security services founded by seasoned professionals in Enterprise IT Security, Intelligence agencies, Ethical hacking, and Cybercrime investigation environments.

The competition was created not only to test the skills of cyber security experts and crisis response teams but to raise general awareness about cybercrime, as cybersecurity is still an underestimated and underfunded agenda in many companies and institutions.[1] The first Guardians competition took place in 2017, simulating an attack on a nuclear power plant, referring to the attack on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015. The choice of the topic for each edition is meant to reflect current cyber security trends and threats, while at the same time, Guardians is aiming to contribute to the protection of societal values.

## Previous Rounds

Year  | Title  | Description

|
|

2021  | FREEDOM OF THE PRESS  | Malicious private and nation-state actors trying to hijack control over one of the pillars of modern democracy – the media
2020  | VACCINE RESEARCH  | With the world rushing to develop a vaccine, attackers were trying to hijack sensitive information and intellectual property
2019  | PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION  | In the run-up to the presidential election in Slovakia, the scenario featured state-sponsored hackers targeting a presidential candidates staff to influence the elections
2018  | HOSPITAL UNDER ATTACK  | Simulated attack in a hospital environment targeted patients’ health records, the hospitals website, and smart-building technology
2017  | NUCLEAR POWERPLANT DISASTER  | The simulation of an attack targeted the power generator of a nuclear power plant based on December 2015 events in Ukraine

## Media Coverage

Various Slovak media outlets annually report on the competition, including tech-oriented ones, like Touch IT, but also general newspapers like Denník SME and Denník N.[2] The coverage ranges from reporting on the course of the competition and the winners to the added value of spreading awareness about cybersecurity and pointing out vulnerabilities in certain infrastructures.[3][4]

## Similar Competitions

DEF CON – cybersecurity/hacker convention, taking place annually in Las Vegas since 1993. The event also consists of hacking wargames, including Capture the Flag format Guardians is also using

CyberGame – Cybersecurity competition taking place over several weeks, organized by National Cyber Security Centre (SK-CERT)[5]

European Cybersecurity Challenge – annual international Capture the Flag competition powered by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA)[6]

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Guardians.sk" (in sk-SK). https://www.guardians.sk/.
2. ↑ "Expert z NASES Radoslav Zlacký získal 2. miesto v prestížnej kyberbezpečnostnej súťaži Guardians | TOUCHIT" (in sk-SK). 2021-11-15. https://touchit.sk/expert-z-nases-radoslav-zlacky-ziskal-2-miesto-v-prestiznej-kyberbezpecnostnej-sutazi-guardians/381080.
3. ↑ a.s, Petit Press. "Študenti bránili nemocnicu pred hackermi. Neviete, čo príde, hovoria" (in sk). https://tech.sme.sk/c/20790065/studenti-branili-nemocnicu-pred-hackermi-neviete-co-pride-hovoria.html.
4. ↑ Tóda, Mirek (2018-02-22). "Myslíš, že si dobrý hacker? Tak skús zastaviť kyberútok na nemocnicu" (in sk-SK). https://dennikn.sk/1037315/myslis-ze-si-dobry-hacker-tak-skus-zastavit-kyberutok-na-nemocnicu/.
5. ↑ "CYBERGAME". https://cybergame.sk-cert.sk/.
6. ↑ "European Cybersecurity Challenge" (in en-us). https://ecsc.eu/.

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