Team hashcow comprising Choong Chih Xien, Alexandr Sukhamera and Nikita Pivnev from the School of Computing & Technology of Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) attained the championship at the F-Secure Intervarsity Cyber Security Hackathon 2018.

This victory also retained the university’s championship title for the third time in a row, as teams from APU also attained the championship in the F-Secure Intervarsity Cyber Security Hackathon back in 2016 and 2017. As a third-time champion, the trophy will now be displayed permanently at APU, to commemorate the success and achievements by the students.

In addition, team Leviathan from APU also attained the second place at the hackathon while team ItMightWork emerged as one of the grand finalists despite making their first appearance at the competition.

The teams were amongst the 110 teams that came from 22 universities within Malaysia, who assembled to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in the field of cybersecurity.

The F-Secure Intervarsity Cyber Security Competition is an initiative established from the long-standing partnership between F-Secure and the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to encourage students to be equipped with the knowledge and skills in the field of IT and Cyber Security.

Participating students at the competition were required to be prepared with knowledge on the news and current events related to cyber threats, security and targeted attacks, malware, forensics, programming, encryption, debugging, and more. As such, students were provided with the platform to demonstrate their academic skills and express their interests in the IT security field.

All teams from APU were under the guidance of the Yogeswaran A/L Nathan and Yusnita Yusof from the APU Forensics & Cyber Security Research Centre (FSeC), that was established to develop skills set pertaining to the forensics and cybersecurity in order to meet the demands of the future in new trends, governance, regulation, partnerships, skills, and tools.

The F-Secure Intervarsity Cyber Security Competition APU
Team hashcow from Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) championed the F-Secure Intervarsity Cybersecurity Hackathon 2018, retaining the university’s title for the third time in a row. From left: Ingvar Froiland, F-Secure Corporation general manager and director, Nikita Pivnev, Choong Chih Xien, Alexandr Sukhamera and Afiqah Zainal, Client Management Executive, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).
The F-Secure Intervarsity Cyber Security Competition
The F-Secure Intervarsity Cyber Security Competition 2018 tested the skills of students in IT, Cyber Security and General Knowledge. Team hashcow, from left: Choong Chih Xien, Alexandr Sukhamera and Nikita Pivnev.