Call for Paritipation: C.I.P.H.E.R Contest

[Maximillian Dornseif <dornseif () informatik rwth-aachen de>]

We are organizing an CTF-alike contest which might be of interest to 
the readers of this group since a considerable PArt consists of 
analyzing and exploiting vulnerabilities in Web-Applications.

http://lufgi4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/news/show/31

RWTH hosts international contest on IT-Security
The Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems at RWTH Aachen, 
headed by Prof. Dr. Felix Freiling, hosts an international contest on 
IT-Security on July 22nd.
The Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems at RWTH Aachen, 
headed by Prof. Dr. Felix Freiling, hosts an international contest on 
IT-Security on July 22nd. The contest called “CIPHER” is open to teams 
of students from universities and targets real-life security issues. 
Each team will have to host a server running multiple services, like 
WWW and e-mail, that have to be kept running correctly during the 
exercise. The automated scoring system will judge services for uptime 
and correctness. The unusual experience for most students will be that 
attacking the other team’s server is not only encouraged but also an 
essential part of the contest. Every successful attack is awarded, 
while the compromised team’s scores are reduced. The contest will not 
be held in the public internet, of course, but in a secured Virtual 
Private Network. This way, each team can attend the exercise from its 
own university and there will be no sideeffects on the world wide web. 
The contest allows students to gain real-life experience with practical 
methods of IT-security and perfectly supplements traditional education 
at universities. “Only if you know the methods of an attacker you’re 
able to defend your own systems properly.”, comments Prof. Dr. Felix 
Freiling whose laboratory will host and organize the event.
There are still free slots for participants. Universities, as well as 
students, are encouraged to contact the organizers for details on how 
to participate. Teams of up to five students from a single university 
can apply for participation. The students should be able to 
administrate Linux systems, read and write code in some modern 
programming languages, and be somewhat skilled in exploitation 
techniques.
The event will be on Friday, July 22nd 2005. At RWTH Aachen university 
there will be a local event for bystanders, groupies and the interested 
public providing live coverage of the event. The local organization is 
done by the Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems, headed by 
Prof. Dr. Felix Freiling and supported by the channcelors office of the 
RWTH. Point of contact is Lexi Pimenidis, assistant at the Chair for 
Communication and Distributed Systems:
contact
Lexi Pimenidis lexi () i4 informatik rwth-aachen de +49 241 80-21419
More information on the contest can be found at 
http://www-i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~lexi/cipher.php
-- 
Maximillian Dornseif
Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems, RWTH Aachen University
Tel. +49 241 80-21431 - http://md.hudora.de/