Next weekend marks the 12^th annual HITCON in Taiwan. What is HITCON? It’s the biggest online hacking war games in Asia. HITCON, or Hacks In Taiwan, has been going for 12 years, and is scheduled to get underway starting Saturday. HITCON is only two days, running until Sunday..

HITCON CTF (Capture The Flag) is a preliminary marathon-style game, and the top ten teams will be able to visit the final competition held in Taiwan as well, only in December. Additionally, the winner of the final wargame will qualify to be part of DEF CON 25 CTF the following year. DEF CON is the largest hacker convention in the world, and is held yearly in Las Vegas.

HITCON has a reputation for being a technical security conference, where information security specialists gather to work, share, and trade face-to-face experience.

“Hackers represent a challenging spirit and have tremendous knowledge and skills regarding information security,” a HITCON spokesperson commented.

Participants of HITCON will be given the toughest information security problems made by organizers.

Last year’s winning team ended up attending DEF CON, and placing fourth overall. This marks the third year in a row a HITCON winner has placed in the top four at DEFCON. HITCON also commented that this year’s winner will most certainly be able to enter in next year’s HITCON war games.

The first HITCON was started in 2005, in Taiwan. Since its initial debut in ’05, HITCON has gained support from the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs as a way to raise awareness for information security. The government backed Industrial Technology Research Institute provides support to HITCON as a way to help the games grow in order to show how far cooperation between the private sector and government can go.

969 teams attended HITCON last year. Over 1,500 hackers represented Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, as well as the U.S. and Russia.

HITCON says that this year $18,000 will be given out for prize money in order to encourage more participation.

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