KASPERSKY’S recent Codebreakers cybersecurity competition showcased the complexity of reverse engineering, as revealed by cybersecurity specialists from over 35 countries. Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) and Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) indicate that the skills gap in cybersecurity remains a pressing concern for the industry. To address this issue, Kaspersky continues to offer expert training both online and offline, conducting boot camps and workshops for InfoSec practitioners.
In June 2023, Kaspersky organized the Codebreakers competition, attracting more than 550 participants from diverse countries such as France, Germany, USA, Russia, Brazil, China, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The competition aimed to test InfoSec professionals’ hard skills within a limited timeframe, exposing their strengths and weaknesses.
The competition comprised three tracks: Threat Hunting with Yara, Reverse Engineering, and Incident Response. Participants tackled cybersecurity challenges, analyzing attack scenarios on corporate networks, writing Yara rules for malware detection, and reverse engineering programs by cracking APK obfuscators, training machine learning models, and working with disassemblers and debuggers.
Among the participants, only 18 individuals successfully solved all the tasks, with the InfoSec practitioners from the Czech Republic and South Korea demonstrating outstanding performance.
Notably, the reverse engineering tasks proved the most challenging, requiring specific knowledge of system programming, x86 and ARM architectures, and practical skills in using disassemblers and debuggers like IDA Pro, Ghidra, x64dbg, WinDBG, and OllyDbg.
Conversely, the tasks related to Yara were completed at a faster pace, as it is a widely-used tool for analyzing malicious code, making it more familiar and easier to handle for participants.
Dan Demeter, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky, commented that the competition aimed to simulate real-world challenges faced by InfoSec professionals, assessing their readiness to confront advanced cyber threats in various scenarios.
Yuliya Dashchenko, Team Lead of Expert Trainings at Kaspersky, emphasized the company’s commitment to enhancing the professional background of InfoSec practitioners through its Expert Training portfolio, which covers diverse cybersecurity topics ranging from basic reverse engineering to advanced threat detection and malware analysis.
As a prize, the winner received free access to one of Kaspersky’s Expert Training programs, while others were offered significant discounts on any training program.
Overall, participants lauded the well-balanced and challenging nature of the Codebreakers competition, providing them with valuable learning experiences. The competition successfully highlighted the importance of reverse engineering expertise and the need for continuous skill development in the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape.
