The scene was set: a analysis base on the Pink Planet was struck by a cyberattack and eight groups on Earth had only a matter of hours to put it aside. Removed from being a farfetched state of affairs, cyberattacks are sadly a every day drawback for all sectors, together with house exploration, and may have devastating penalties.
The ‘Pwn The Rover’ hacking contest was held on 17 October at ESA’s mission management centre in Darmstadt, Germany, in collaboration with Fraunhofer SIT and ATHENE-Center. Its aim was to carry collectively, educate and encourage youthful generations within the realm of cybersecurity.
The hackathon was difficult, actually pushing groups in a mixture of time-limited and difficult however believable eventualities;
- Managing their ‘ExoMy’ rover and defending its methods from different groups’ assaults,
- Attacking competing rovers in an effort to exploit them,
- Driving their rover by means of a mock-up of an deserted Mars base
- Unlocking and fixing Seize The Flag (CTF) challenges – the place strings of code, referred to as ‘flags’, are secretly hidden in purposefully-vulnerable applications or web sites.
Congratulations to the successful group, “SPAAAAAACE”, from Warsaw College of Expertise and College of Potsdam, with a formidable 2000 factors! And particular mentions additionally to the runners-up who got here in shut behind: ENOFLAG, from Technische Universität Berlin and Universität Paderborn, with 1950 factors and pwnthem0le, from Politecnico di Torino, scoring 1800.
“Every of the actions have been intertwined ultimately, so groups couldn’t full one with out giving some consideration to the opposite components of the competition,” explains Dominik Marszk, Engineer at ESA who co-organised the competition.
“This required groups to excel and organise themselves throughout a a lot wider than regular space of experience. The successful groups managed to evolve and apply totally different techniques all through the occasion which resulted in a really fierce competitors.”
With due to all of the very spectacular groups who participated and everybody who utilized for Pwn The Rover 2023: with actions like this and the keenness of all concerned, our future in house is trying safe.
Keep tuned to @esaoperations on X and LinkedIn for data on the subsequent Hackathon.
