SK shieldus said on the 10th that Senior Researcher Lee Dong-ju of the white-hat hacker group EQST took first place overall at the Dreamhack Invitational 2026 held at COEX in Seoul.
The competition was held as an official program of the .HACK Conference 2026, a global security conference, and brought together security experts from Korea and abroad to compete.
The event followed a CTF (Capture The Flag) format in which participants earn points for each problem solved. Contestants competed across a range of domains, including web security, system vulnerability exploitation, program analysis, cryptanalysis, and Blockchain security.
After advancing to the finals from a preliminary round with about 900 participants as a top finisher, Senior Researcher Lee demonstrated consistent skills in the finals to claim the overall victory.
In particular, by solving high-difficulty problems in cryptanalysis and Blockchain security, Lee proved outstanding problem-solving abilities, scoring a total of 2,225 points. Even under recent competition environments that restrict the use of artificial intelligence (AI), Lee showed competitiveness based on analytical capabilities.
Senior Researcher Lee Dong-ju of the SK shieldus EQST Lab team said, "We were able to validate the latest attack techniques through this competition," adding, "We will continue to study evolving security trends to help strengthen our competitiveness." Lee added, "It was meaningful to achieve significant results at this competition as a representative of the company."