SK shieldus said on the 27th that the white-hat hacker group EQST (Experts, Qualified Security Team) won second place in the CTF general division at the international hacking defense competition CODEGATE 2026, hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT.
CODEGATE is a leading domestic international hacking defense competition and security conference hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and co-organized by the CODEGATE Security Forum and Hancom Group. This year's event was held on the 23rd–24th at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and the CTF was divided into the general division (team) and the junior division (individual).
A CTF is a hacking defense competition in which participants solve various security problems within a limited time to compete for points. In this year's general division finals, 20 teams from eight countries advanced and competed over 24 hours to solve problems across fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), web, systems, reversing, cryptography, and Blockchain.
EQST formed a joint team, competed in the general division, and finished second. In particular, it proved its technical prowess by solving a system hacking problem based on a real vulnerability research case from recently disclosed game software. The problem restructured cutting-edge research—made public only about seven weeks ago—for a Linux environment, and, according to the explanation, required a deep understanding of the vulnerability's principles and the capability to apply them to a new environment.
EQST is a white-hat hacker organization of about 200 people that conducts penetration testing, vulnerability research, red team operations, and AI security research. It studies the latest attack techniques and countermeasures and applies them to security services for corporations.
Lee Dong-ju, a senior researcher at the EQST Lab who took part in the competition, said, "Regularly keeping up with the latest vulnerabilities and security research and building experience while carrying out related work greatly helped in this competition," and added, "The rapid sharing of information gathered by team members over 24 hours and collaboration that leveraged each person's strengths led to the runner-up finish."