Group-IB, one of the global leaders in cybersecurity, headquartered in Singapore, in collaboration with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), JTC Corporation, Association of Information Security Professionals (AiSP), helped to organize and run the PDD Connecting Smartness Bug Bounty 2.0 Contest, hosted by the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). The winner, Lim Keat Hui Justin, a 3rd-year SIT student, was awarded on Monday, September 26, at the Cloud Security Summit 2022.
Associate Professor Goh Weihan, Programme Leader, InfoComm Technology Cluster who headed the judging panel, said, “Bug bounties are unique opportunities for participants to test their skills against real-world systems, and I am glad that we were able to leverage on our Living Lab prototype at SIT@NYP Building to provide such an opportunity not just for SIT students, but also for the public to engage in such activities. I am certain that through this experience, we will run many more bug bounties in time to come as we move to a full-fledged Living Lab at our new campus in Punggol.”
Vitaly Salnikov, Application Security Analyst at Group-IB Singapore, who judged the contest, said, “The bug-bounties competitions allow participants to test their skills by identifying bugs or vulnerabilities in real-world systems. We are proud to be part of the initiative further enables Singapore to develop a talent pool, critically needed, to take on new cybersecurity roles as the threat landscape evolves every day.”
Co-organized by Group-IB for the second year in a row, PDD Connecting Smartness Bug Bounty Contest aims to attract the brightest cybersecurity talents, so they can test their skills by identifying bugs and vulnerabilities in real-world systems. As part of the 2022 competition, held at the SIT@NYP building in August, the contestants’ goal was to test a prototype of a living lab network that the JTC plans to build in a new SIT Campus in the Punggol Digital District that is under construction and due for completion in 2024. Industry partners will leverage SIT as a ‘living lab,’ using the institution’s open innovation ecosystem to pilot and test their prototypes in a real-life environment.
Masterplanned and developed by JTC, a government agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Punggol Digital District will support the digital economy growth in Singapore. It will exemplify the achievements of Singapore’s Smart Nation Initiative. In 2021, Group-IB became one of the first four tech companies to join the Punggol Digital District along with Boston Dynamics, Delta Electronics Int’l (Singapore), and Wanxiang.
Group-IB team also configured and installed its Managed XDR – an all-in-one solution for advanced detection, response, and threat prevention – to monitor network events.
Although the contestants found no critical vulnerabilities and did not take control of the network, Lim Keat Hui Justin, a third-year SIT student majoring in information security, was able to bypass the authorization of a network router and expose some of its technical information. A panel of judges, which included CSA, JT Consultancy & Management, and Group-IB decided to award Justin a Certificate of Achievement and S$500 worth of Vouchers.
