The Most Valuable Hacker is from Porto, Portugal
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The Most Valuable Hacker is a Portuguese from Porto. André Baptista, researcher at INESC TEC and Master in IT Security from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP) earned first place at the H1-202, which took place in Washington D.C., on 24 and 25 March.
Participants from across the world had to overcome computer systems' problems in the Mapbox Company.
The registered participants, skilled computer experts had to use their technical knowledge to deal with the circumvention of computer security, exposing potential security vulnerabilities and helping fix the security bugs.
The judging criteria included creativity, completeness, coherent story, and tools used.
André Baptista was able to expose five vulnerabilities and stood out for the originality on bug tracking and for the team effort and was awarded a prize money worth 7.300 euros.
"In this ever more globalised world we live in, it is natural that big companies want to protect themselves from vulnerabilities in software and websites. My role as a hacker is to know how to track them and how to fix them, making sure companies are safe from this threats", André Baptista stated.
The H1-202 competition was organised by HackerOne, a reputed platform known for providing hacker-powered security testing.
Besides taking part in this competition, André Baptista was also invited to give talks at high schools on Computing Culture and Ethics in Washington, D.C.