17 Hackspaces From 7 Countries Joined PHDays III

To take part in the PHDays forum, local information security specialists gathered together in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Birzeit (Palestine), Cairo (Egypt), Kollam (India), Tunis (Tunisia), Kiev and Lviv (Ukraine), and Vladivostok, Voronezh, Kaliningrad, Novosibirsk, Omsk, St. Petersburg, Saratov and Ufa (Russia).

Program

The visitors of the hackspaces could not only watch the broadcast of PHDays in Moscow, but also take part in several contests. Particularly, there was a contest called Sprint specially organized for PHDays Everywhere spots this year. The participants could try themselves in solving various tasks developed by Positive Technologies experts.

The competition was based on the following scheme: once a task was solved, the participant obtained a key (flag) and scored the appropriate number of points. The contest was held for two days, during the forum.

Eventually, the contest winner was the team of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”. The second place was taken by students of the Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management, and the third one – by the participants of the hackspace organized at the Automation Systems of Information Processing and Management department of the Omsk State Technical University.

Moreover, some hackspaces were holding their own contests. For example, the organizers from the Novosibirsk Academpakr prepared a special hacking quiz.

Photo by Ruslan Permyakov

Also, the hackspace visitors could take part in various hands-on labs. For instance, the above-mentioned Novosibirsk hackspace had an opportunity to participate in a RFID lab.

CTF

This year, Vladivostok (Far Eastern Federal University) and Novosibirsk (Information Security Systems) held their own CTFs.

The Far Eastern contest DvCTF hosted 12 teams which for 10 hours had been competing in solving information security problems. They could earn extra points by solving teaser tasks before the main CTF began. Finally, the first and the second prizes were taken by the students of the School of Natural Sciences of the Far Eastern Federal University, and the third won the team of Vladivostok high school students. You can check out the photo report in the DvCTF VKontacte group.

More than 60 people from various countries of the world registered for participation in Novosibirsk NskCTF. 28 of them managed to solve at least one task and earn points. Eventually, the participant from Rumania, Sin0x01, was declared the winner. The second prize was taken by keva from Russa, and thecat from North Korea became the third.

Space Bridges

Special space bridges were organized to connect Positive Hack Days guests in Moscow and PHDays Everywhere hackspaces. The bridges linked Cairo, Tunis, Kiev, Omsk, Vladivostok and Novosibirsk.

“We are glad the PHDays Everywhere initiative receives support both from academic circles and industry representatives,” says Yevgeniya Potseluyevskaya, the organizer of the PHDays Everywhere events from the side of Positive Technologies.“PHDays expands geographically due to new hackspaces joining. It is worth noting that this year we had particularly many PHDays Everywhere hackspaces which not only connected to the broadcast, but also actively participated in competitions, organized their own competitions, conducted reports and labs. The initiative enriched the forum’s program, and we hope we will have even more active participants next year.”

View of Vladivostok from the window of the Far Eastern Federal University

We thank all the organizations and people that took part in organizing and holding PHDays Everywhere events. The full list of the initiative’s hackspaces is available on the official site of the forum.