Before we go on – hacking competitions are not illegal and many of them are organised across the world each year. They give a chance for the white hat hacking community to improve their skills and can often find flaws in software that benefit all of us. Once a cyber security software issue is out in the open it is more difficult for the black hat hacking community to exploit it.
Many companies pay a substantial bounty to researchers and white hat hackers when they confidentially inform the companies of vulnerabilities in their software. This hopefully gives the software vendor an opportunity to patch the fault before the black hat hackers can exploit it – so avoiding a Zero Day attack.
It has emerged that an iOS flaw patched by Apple back in 2019 had been previously discovered at a Chinese Hacking Competition and then exploited to target ethic Uyghur Chinese.
The Tianfu Cup was started in China to keep Chinese hacking skills and the subsequent vulnerabilities and exploits discovered in such products as Windows, Android and iOS available to China following an article by Sina, Zhou Hongyi, CEO of the Chinese cyber security giant Qihoo 360. It is not stated explicitly whether the use would be commercial or political but soon after this article the Chinese government banned Chinese participation in international white hat hacking events and set up the The Tianfu Cup.
Read more at the article below:
Cyber security vulnerabilities are a key element to bad actor running an exploit against you or your company. One of your best defences is keeping all your operating systems, software and devices patched and up to date. Octagon Technology has a number of low impact monitoring tools that you can deploy across your organisation to monitor, report and in some case force updates and patches. Ensuring your protection is as up to date as possible.
Clive Catton MSc (Cyber Security) – by-line and other articles
