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Nepal Welcomes First Hackers’ Meet ‘Threat Con’ 2018

Threat Con on November 22-23, 2018 will dwell on concepts of hacking literacy
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Nepal Welcomes First Hackers’ Meet ‘Threat Con’ 2018

Creating awareness on internet security and increasing the knowledge on ‘hacking literacy’, Nepal’s young research team is conducting Threat Con.

Nepal’s first hackers’ meet is scheduled for November 22 and 23, 2018 in Kathmandu and is being organized by a private internet security service provider ThreatNix.

“We were aware that Nepali websites were not safe, but the number was really alarming: 700 plus websites were found attacked by hackers.”

 

“We concluded that almost an equal number of websites get hacked every year. It was a serious issue,” says Threat Con organizer Suyash Nepal.

Threat Con is designed for different target groups and will provide extensive teaching sessions for comprehensive knowledge gaining. This knowledge will be instrumental in developing career goals.

“Though the number of professionals is very low, there are many people who are interested to work in this field. Most of them are students of computer science and different engineering programs. Some private colleges in Kathmandu have introduced dedicated cyber-security courses under foreign university affiliations,” adds Nepal.

The two-day event will hold two workshops— building secure APIs & web applications and bug bounty.

A conference will be held on the second day including five paper presentations on:

  • Building and developing communities
  • OWASP top 10 2018 controls
  • Exploiting synchronization to mask IOTs
  • License agreement and managing organization’s cloud security posture
  • A panel discussion on Nepal’s cybersecurity challenges

And, a panel discussion involving concerned government agencies & private company representatives and security professionals will also be held as part of the event.

“Besides talk sessions and workshops, we offer the participants an opportunity to build networks of the professionals,” says researcher Abiral Shreshta.

“On the sidelines of the conference, we have tool exhibition stalls, live bug bounty demonstrations and hacking games. There will be a chill out area where you can take rest and talk about anything if any of the presentations bores you. It will be a completely fun event,” informed Nepal.

ThreatNix is organizing the event in partnership with Internet Society Chapter Nepal and CAN Federation among others.

“We have requested the government agencies to bear some costs of the event as well, and we are hopeful about their cooperation,” adds Nepal.

Additionally, government agencies such as Nepal Telecommunications Authority and the Department of Information Technology will provide ‘moral support’.

So far, 30 professionals have registered to the event.

Tech Gyaan – A Know-how about Hacking & Internet Security
Nepal and Shrestha have shared some knowledge on hacking and internet security. Here’s what they said:

“Hacking is not a negative activity in itself. Both attackers and defenders can be called hackers. People who manipulate software & websites and operate them in the way they want are hackers. But, their intentions differentiate whether they are attackers or defenders.” says Nepal.

According to Nepal, people who hack information are called ‘crackers’.

“The international community differentiates hackers from crackers. However, in the case of Nepal, they are all ‘hackers’. Therefore, here, we use the phrase ‘ethically active hackers’ to refer to people like us, who hack software and websites to help people enhance their security,” informs Shrestha.

Nepal adds that there are a large of ‘ethically active hackers’. “It is amazing that there are hundreds of people who hack websites of other people and companies, find out their shortcomings, fix them and come out without revealing the identity, many times without expecting any reward,” adds Shrestha.

Threat Con also aims to bridge hacking professionals and the market requirement. “Every place that stores data in digital form and uses the internet to disseminate information needs hackers to keep data safe. Therefore, our scope is very wide. But, today, the number of professional hacking personnel in Nepal is around 20-25,” Shrestha reveals.

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