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Hack-A-Sat 3 Challenge Overview from DEF CON

Mark Werremeyer and Bryce Kerley join Dennis Fisher to talk about this year’s Hack-a-Sat capture the flag competition, how the challenges have evolved since last year, and how the competition helps players build their hacking skills.

Link to the podcast: Decipher Podcast: Hack-a-Sat 2022 | Decipher (duo.com)

Cybersecurity is the only technical, professional occupation I know of where practitioners routinely sharpen their skills through open competitions. The contests are based on the classic capture the flag game – except the flags are all virtual and capturing them involves hacking computers. Also unlike most other technical careers, cybersecurity is a high-paying profession that doesn’t require a university degree or formal training. There are literally hundreds of thousands of unfilled cybersecurity jobs right now. You can also just dabble in cybersecurity, making money from bug bounty programs. Or you can just hack for the fun of it – in a completely safe and legal environment. Jordan will tell you all about it in today’s show! Jordan Wiens has been a reverse engineer, vulnerability researcher, network security engineer, three-time DEF CON CTF winner, even a technical magazine writer but now he’s mostly a has-been CTF player who loves to talk about them. He has been the CTF expert for the first three years of HackASat and he was one of the founders of Vector 35, the company that makes Binary Ninja. Link to the podcast: https://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2022/10/03/capture-the-flag-for-fun-profit/

Aerospace and the satellite ecosystem is comprised of several systems — a system of systems, in fact. Does the sector offer enough transparency to ensure each one operates securely while supporting the core objectives of reliance, resiliency, and recoverability? The team behind the hack-at-sat CTF says we need to do more.

Link to the podcast: Reliant — Resilient — Recoverable | Exploring Space Security And The Hack-a-Sat Capture The Flag Event | A Conversation With Logan Finch And Jason Williams | Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast With Sean Martin

Satellites today lack basic security controls. With as little as $300, you, too, can hack into commercial satellites. So that’s an emerging IoT problem.

Frank Pound and Login Finch share in this episode their work with Hack-A-Sat. It’s a unique Capture the Flag challenge that’s never been tried before. Here’s the background story of how the project got started … and where it’s going.

Link to the podcast: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-85h2e-12f0fa9

What happens now to the digital test environment built for Hack-A-Sat 3? Well, it becomes a rich testing and training environment for all on GitHub. Login Finch and Frank Pound continue sharing some of the behind-the-scenes challenges presented by hosting a Hack-A-Sat capture the flag competition, this time drilling down details behind the Digital Twins environment that needed to be built in advance of next year’s hack of an actual satellite in orbit.

Link to the podcast: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4bh24-12fbab8?utm_campaign=au_share_ep&utm_medium=dlink&utm_source=au_share