South Korea holds world's first contest to counter AI hacking

SEOUL, December 02 (AJP) - South Korea has wrapped up the world’s first AI Hacking Defense Contest (ACDC), an event designed to test emerging cybersecurity threats and defense techniques in the era of artificial intelligence.

The competition was hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and organized by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) in partnership with the Korea Information Security Industry Association (KISIA).

The contest examined three major domains: AI security applications, AI safety assurance and AI platform security. Preliminary rounds were held over two days beginning Oct. 31, with 20 teams advancing to the finals on Dec. 1 at COEX in Seoul.

The final stage combined traditional capture-the-flag (CTF) challenges with AI-based attack-and-defense exercises. The Ministry of Science and ICT team — comprising members from Singularity, Superblock, Viva Republica and Toss Securities — won the top honor, the Minister of Science and ICT Award.

“This contest was a great opportunity to highlight the importance of AI security, which is often overlooked,” said Joo Kyu-hwan, leader of the winning Ministry of Science and ICT team. “I enjoyed the competition from the preliminaries through the finals and appreciate the efforts of my teammates and the organizers.”

In the general category, the GYG team, representing Toss and Theory, won the KISA President’s Award. The student division was topped by Pwngrad, a joint team from KAIST and Soongsil University, which received the KISIA President’s Award.

Special awards were presented to the 78RL78 team (78ResearchLab) and the “Do You Know Ucando” team (Yonsei University), who received the LG Uplus CEO Award, and to the RHCP team from POSTECH, which earned the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology President’s Award.

KISA said it plans to expand the ACDC into an international event next year.

* This article, published by Aju Business Daily, was translated by AI and edited by AJP.

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