PHDays VII: hacking competitions designed to keep things real

For many participants, hacking competitions are the highlight of PHDays. This year we've prepared a number of contests—some of them old hat, others entirely new, but all realistic—for participants' hacking pleasure. Most of the contests will take place as part of The Standoff, which centers around a smart city. Forum visitors can try to hack a smart home, surveillance cameras, and IoT devices, peek under the hood of a smart car, and break the infrastructure of our mock city.

The WAF Bypass contest is back as well. As before, participants will attempt to bypass PT Application Firewall, the web application firewall solution from Positive Technologies. Tasks will challenge participants to bypass the new database protection component of PT Application Firewall. Victory will be assessed based on flags. Both forum visitors and ordinary Internet users will have the opportunity to try their hand.

Hackers in the mood for espionage can check out MITM Mobile. Our very own mobile operator will be servicing the PHDays venue. So participants will have free reign to intercept SMS messages, find USSDs, eavesdrop on phone conversations, and clone mobile devices.

Looking for piles of money? Try $natch. We've made this contest even bigger and better this year with a full-fledged setup that includes banks, ATMs, self-service terminals, online stores, and bank cards. Your mission: to get money by any means possible. And for those in a less criminal mood, there's also something in it for any white hats who can find zero-day vulnerabilities and quickly write a high-quality advisory.

New to this year's PHDays is HackBattle. A qualifying stage will be held on the first day of the forum, where participants will need to complete several tasks. On the second day, the brightest hacker minds will assemble on the main stage to astound the audience with their speed, smarts, and improvisation while hacking in real time. Our team of professional streamers will be providing commentary all the while.

More detailed information on the start of the competitions will be published soon. Check our page for news and get ready for exciting action!

The forum's partners are Microsoft, IBM, Infotecs, R-Vision, Solar Security and Axoft; the business partners is MONT; among technology partners are Cisco, CompTek, ARinteg, Qrator, and Wallarm; the Standoff partners are PaloAlto, ICL System technologies, Beyond Security; the Standoff participants are Informzaschita, Advanced Monitoring, Jet Infosystems and CROC; the general information partner is the news agency TASS.