Global Cyberlympics is an hands-on cybersecurity team competition that brings together the best ethical hackers from around the world to compete in a series of challenges
Chinenye Anuforo
Two Nigerian teams of cybersecurity professionals from a group called the “NaijaSecForce” have emerged the African champions in Global Cyberlympics, the Olympics for cybersecurity professionals and ethical hackers around the world.
The teams, NaijaSecForce and Ek0pwn3rs came first and second, respectively, and are to represent Africa at the global event. Both teams also made it to the top 12 position in the world in the online qualifying round of the competition, having solved all the challenges from the pre-qualifying round. Global Cyberlympics is an hands-on cybersecurity team competition that brings together the best ethical hackers from around the world to compete in a series of challenges such as forensics, penetration testing, cryptography, malware analysis, capture the flag challenges.
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This year’s competition was full of intrigues as the participants were given hardened systems to break into and other complex tasks to complete within a 12-hour period. They defeated teams from other nations and the African region such as Egypt, Morocco, Kenya,
Sudan and Ghana, among others to clinch the top spot in Africa.
Judging was based on the speed at which systems were hacked, the number of vulnerabilities found, challenges solved or flags found and the techniques used to uncover and exploit them.
NaijaSecForce was made up of Rotimi Akinyele (Captain), Oluwaeseun Oyelude (PwC Nigeria), Funmipe Olofinlade (eSentry Systems Ltd), and others.
Ek0pwn3rs had in its team Abimbola Jaiyeola (Captain), Chinedu Onwukike (IBM, Canada), Chidi Obum (Cyberinfocts), and others.