A crack team of hackers from the University of Abertay Dundee are on their way to France to take part in an international hacking competition.
The five-strong team will compete at the Maubeuge Information Technology Trade Fair in Maubeuge in the ‘Ethical Hacking Challenge’ against students from French universities.
Reminiscent of a script from a Hollywood drama, the would-be hackers will be working non-stop through the night, from 8pm to 8am, on an urgent complex computer security challenge.
This is the first year of the competition and it is hoped that more teams from Europe and beyond will be invited in the future.
Abertay launched the UK’s first degree in Ethical Hacking in 2006 to a storm of media attention. The course teaches students the skills and techniques used by criminal hackers to crack government and private sector security systems causing billions of pounds worth of damage and loss every year.
Students study operating systems, computer networking, TCP/IP architecture, client and server systems, network management, encryption, ethical hacking, penetration testing, forensic computing, mobile technology, ethics and law.
Armed with this knowledge, graduates from the course are able to advise organisations on how to counter such attacks and protect their networks.
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Photo shows (left to right) Lewis Bruce, Nick Walker, Roddy Meise, David Paton, Richard Milne and lecturer Colin McLean.