“Capture The Flags” was a network security contest, the objective of which was for teams to gain as many points as possible by defending their servers and attacking other teams’ servers. Teams were given identical pre-configured vmware images of a Gentoo Linux installation. There were custom services running on the servers which contained vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflows, format string and so on. The teams had to analyse the services, find vulnerabilities and write exploits.

Seven teams took part in the contest. Vietnam’s Blue Moon team, gathering network security experts of VnSeucrity.net, won the first prize, and MitDac, comprising network security experts from FPT, CMC Infosec and the East Asia Bank, claimed the second prize. The third prize went to a South Korean group.

HITBSecConf is Asia’s largest network ­security conference and is organised by Hack In The Box (M) Sdn Bhd. The main aim of this conference is to promote the dissemination, discussion and sharing of deeper knowledge of network security.

Presented by respected members of both the mainstream network security arena as well as the underground or black hat community, HITB events routinely showcase new and ground-breaking attack and defence methods that have not been seen or discussed in public before.