SK shieldus's white-hat hacker group EQST advanced to the finals of an international hacking competition as part of a global alliance team composed of Naver Cloud and security researchers from Finland and Japan.
SK shieldus said on the 23rd that the alliance team "The Seoul Sauna Shogunate," which EQST joined, passed the online qualifiers for "Defconn 34 CTF," where 686 teams from around the world competed, and was among the 12 teams to reach the finals.
Defconn CTF is a stage for validating technology where the latest attack techniques and defense strategies are tested in real-world scenarios. This year's qualifying round applied new rules reflecting the spread of generative artificial intelligence (AI). If a problem was solved using only AI, evaluators imposed a disadvantage, putting more weight on the analytical skills and real-world capabilities from an actual attacker's perspective.
EQST is Korea's largest white-hat hacker group, with about 200 members active across various fields, including vulnerability research, penetration testing, AI red teaming, Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), and ransomware response. The alliance team included domestic corporations such as EQST as well as researchers from Finland and Japan.
The finals will be conducted in a format that performs offense and defense simultaneously, requiring teams to defend their own systems while finding and exploiting opponents' vulnerabilities. In addition to domestic corporations belonging to the alliance team, teams that advanced to the finals include those with researchers from Samsung Research, Theori Inc., Toss, ENKI WhiteHat, Raonsecure, KR Security, Korea University, POSTECH, and KAIST, among other domestic corporations and universities.
On the 21st, at the Naver Green Factory in Bundang-gu, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, a send-off ceremony was held where researchers from the alliance team, including EQST, attended and reaffirmed their commitment to prepare for the competition. Attendees agreed to expand the global security network and continue sustained technology exchange and joint research.
Meanwhile, this year's competition will be held for three days from Aug. 7 to 9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.