Wanted: Hackers for Telstra

Cyber attack identity theft hackers Source: Supplied

TELSTRA, the Federal Government and Microsoft have invited a bunch of university students to participate in a hacking competition to raise awareness of cyber security issues.

Their goal was to break into a company, and then figure out how to fix security flaws.

Hardware and software has been built for the imaginary company which were be used for the competition, which has been dubbed "Synergise cyber security".

Forty-three teams of students spent 24 hours trying to access the systems, in order to see whether they can penetrate areas where sensitive data is stored and find malicious code. They will be assessed on their ability to highlight and communicate vulnerabilities in the fictional company's security software.

A team from the University of NSW was named the winner.

But what's the point in creating fictional software when there are already hackers out there trying to damage real businesses with real security concerns?

Mike Burgess, Telstra's chief information security officer told news.com.au that inviting "real world hackers" to test the systems of real businesses would be too risky.

"Would it be better if all the world's systems were more secure? Absolutely," he said. "But the reason I wouldn't recommend opening yourself up to the world to come test out their systems is that you'd get lots of other people out there who choose to do malicious things in cyber space and you become a target. They could take your product offline."

"By having a fictitious company with real hardware and software is that if anything goes wrong it's not going to impact anyone."

Mr Burgess said that targeting students with hacking capabilities while they are young is an important way to incentivise them against falling in with cyber criminals.

The winners of the competition will travel to San Francisco to attend one of the world's largest hacking conferences, Black Hat.

Mr Burgess said it's also more than likely that many of the participants will walk away with a job, either with Telstra, Microsoft or the Federal Government.

"Hopefully we're instilling that this is an exciting area to work in and that the students participating will want to have careers as a security professional," he said. "If they end up working for someone else that's ok as well. We need more people in this space."

"People need to make sure their systems are secure. Telstra for example holds a lot of information for its customers. The more people in this career stream, the better it is for everyone."

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