banner

Championship

Athena Dynamics’ Good Hackers Alliance (GHA) Won 1st Place in the SUTD iTrust S317 Critical Info-Infrastructure (CII) Hacking Competition

2017 June 82017 June 8
9:00 am9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)

Event Details

“A Win of Passion” by GHA

It is with great pleasure to announce that Athena Dynamics and NSHC have achieved yet another important milestone by winning 1st place of the prestigious S317 ICS/SCADA Hacking Competition organized by Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). SUTD has a strong and established Research & Development and Educational team in Cyber Protection in Singapore. The annual S317 event was supported by iTrust and the finals was conducted on the 8th and 9th of Jun 2017. Six global hacking organizations were shortlisted subsequent to a stringent selection criteria and a preliminary round of CTF (Capture The Flag).

Athena Dynamics and NSHC collaborated in this pursuit under the joint branding of “Good Hackers Alliance” (GHA). Under this collaborative framework, Athena Dynamics is responsible for the marketing and business engagement for NSHC in Singapore and the region. The group has since achieved various successes in Singapore, helping organizations achieved deep security screening or Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) of both their Enterprise IT Systems and Critical Info-Infra-Structures such as Industry Control Systems.

The partnership between Athena Dynamics and NSHC marks an important milestone in the Critical Infra-structure Protection (CIP) landscapes since its inception in Nov 2015. The collaboration brings about a complete and world-class protection proposition for critical infra-structure at national and enterprise levels.

Today, it is unfortunate that the security health level of critical infra-structure installations depends significantly on the quality of vulnerability assessment. While the market is not short of pen-test offerings, it is important to distinguish and hire the true and quality players to do the “white-hat hacking”.

GHA’s differentiators are well manifested in its winnings in many of the world-class hacking competitions year after year where thousands of participants from all over the world were involved. In a recent assignment, NSHC has even managed to access the door control function of a water dam in just 7 hours simply via internet access.

Athena Dynamics synergizes directly with NSHC’s offering with a strong set of well-deployed CII/ICS protection products originated from Israel, Sweden and the U.S. These products, coupled with strong health assessment, process and people factors, collectively help organizations and nations protect their critical assets in a holistic manner.

The latest winning of the SUTD S317 offensive competition is yet another manifestation of the strength and depth of GHA’s capability, since shortlisted competitors are world-class ethical hacking groups from various parts of the world.

“We are very excited with this win. It is a unique synergy of strength. It is yet another affirmation of our synergistic elements, and how we could bring real values to the cyber security landscapes in Singapore and the region with deep and strong security competencies. We would also like to take this opportunity to express our sincere condolences to the family of Junyuan, a member of GHA team who was supposed to be in this competition, whom we have seen contributed substantially and passionately to many of our collaborated projects thus far. We, with a heavy heart and together with all GHA members, would dedicate the award with utmost respect to Junyuan.”, said Ken.

“We’ve started our operations with 5 people in Singapore a couple of years ago. We grew collaboratively with Athena Dynamics under the branding of GHA into various projects in Singapore. We are proud of what we have done and while we are supposed to be celebrative about this latest winning, very unfortunately, one of our colleagues, Junyuan passed away 2 days prior to the competition. We would hence like to dedicate this winning to Junyuan. He and his pursuit of his life passion will always be respectably and fondly remembered.”, said Louis.

End Note: Athena Dynamics and NSHC, passionately under the joint branding of GHA, would like to dedicate this award with utmost respect to our colleague Chia Jun Yuan who pass on days before the competition, and in memory of his life passion in and contribution to the field of ethnical hacking and the cyber protection of enterprise IT and Industry Control Systems.