Indonesian government supports local hackers, holds national competition

What do you do as a government when your country is one of the biggest sources of cyberattack traffic in the world? You harness it. That’s what the Indonesian government is doing by holding a nationwide hacking competition in the country.

Held by the Ministry of Defense, the Cyber Defense Competition 2014 is going to be held on February 11th for students and the public. Its main objective is to build a network between potential cyber defenders and to help harness hackers’ potential.

The competition will have two phases: online competition as preliminary stage, and offline competition as the final stage. There will be four tests on each phase:

• Forensics – participants will have to identify and fix security threats.
• Penetration test – participants will have to find security flaws on designated system.
• Computer Network Defence – participants will have to set up a secure system to overcome cyber attacks.
• Capture the Flag – participants will hack each other’s security system. Fun!

The competition is open for teams of three to five people. There’s no mention of prizes on the website, but we’ll update this piece if we learn otherwise.

It’s nice to see how supportive the Indonesian government is towards the local hacker community. Indonesian hacker Wildan Yani Ashari defaced the president’s website last year, and instead of being punished, the police decided to nurture the hacker’s talents.

(Read also: 170 Australian websites hacked, hackers demand Australia “stop spying on Indonesia”)

You can find more information and register for the competition here.

(Hat tip to merdeka (in Indonesian))

(Editing by Josh Horwitz)