Welcome to Space Security Challenge 2020, HackASAT, the final event. As the democratization
of space opens up a new frontier for exploration and innovation, we see new cybersecurity
vulnerabilities emerging. The Space Security Challenge is designed to inspire the world's
top cybersecurity talent to develop the skills necessary to secure this last frontier of
cybersecurity, space. And already we've made a ton of progress. I'll catch you up. This spring,
we hosted over 2,000 teams who worked their way through a set of foundational space cybersecurity
challenges in our HackASAT qualification round. Now, eight finalist teams are stepping up to
the ultimate challenge. They are hacking a satellite. Welcome to Space Security Challenge
2020, or HackASAT. I'm your host, Jordan Wines, and I'm very excited to be with you today. I'm here
in Melbourne, Florida at HackASAT HQ, where eight satellites are spinning out of control as the
teams do their best to restore functionality, all for a piece of a $100,000 prize pool.
These teams from 11 different countries around the world include not only some that are very
familiar to those of us from the Capture the Flag, or CTF community, but also include many
newcomers who assembled just to answer the call for HackASAT. Let's meet our teams.
To get to this final event, individuals on these eight teams had to beat out over 6,000 other
competitors for a coveted invitation. This required mastery not only in traditional CTF hacking skills
like reverse engineering and vulnerability research, but also in areas new to the CTF community,
including orbital mechanics, astrophysics, space-based communication systems, and many others.
Today and tomorrow, each of our eight teams will race the others through a series of challenges
to regain control over their Flatsat. If you followed our story at HackASAT.com
and Launch.com.com, you might know that through some bad code and poor business choices,
our defunct Launch.com company has accidentally triggered a satellite intended for the year 2000
to be launched in 2020 with no one in control. In our fictional storyline, this satellite has
been co-opted by nefarious forces, and it's up to our competitors to regain control over
the many components. Since qualifying, each team was shipped a physical Flatsat,
and these Flatsats are not only prizes for their qualifying performance, but also allow the teams
to become familiar with the hardware and software before this final event. So what's the difference
between a satellite and a Flatsat? Think of a Flatsat as a bench version for testing components
of an actual satellite without necessarily being exactly what you would send into space.
The satellites you can watch in our live webcams are Flatsats. But don't worry,
not all of the competition this weekend will be terrestrial. The game has actually been underway
for one hour now, and our team's first challenge has been to regain control of the ground station
that they'll be using to communicate with their Flatsats. Being good hackers, of course, we call
this Challenge Zero. Challenge Zero. Here's what we know. An adversary has obtained access to the
satellite's ground station. Once they obtained access, they kicked us out. The challenge? Teams must
obtain network access to the ground station. This is called Challenge Zero because it's required for
the teams to even kick the game off. While most of our challenges will have teams focusing on
components that are inside of their Flatsats, Challenge Zero is all about gaining access to
the ground station that they'll be using to communicate with their Flatsat. And again, this
is not a simulation. All of these eight Flatsats may be here on Earth, but they're completely
untethered, floating on a cushion of air, and each one being connected wirelessly from a separate
radio link. In the first hour of gameplay, teams have been getting their bearings and working on
solving Challenge Zero. In fact, just before this broadcast went live, we received word that this
challenge was actually solved by Team Samurai. Congratulations to them. Let's go ahead and see
a little bit more about Team Samurai. Team Samurai is a mainstay in the CTF community. In fact, one
of the fun facts about this community is that I've competed against Samurai about as many times as
I've actually competed with them. This community is tight-knit, people move around between them,
and it's good to see them jump into the lead and take a start on the scoreboard. They're now going
to be focusing on Challenge One, which we're going to give you a little bit of a hint on what that
entails now. Challenge number one. Here's what we know. Having access to the ground station means we
can attempt communication, but the satellite is spinning out of control, which complicates
everything. The challenge. Teams must regain communication with the satellite.
While this event was originally planned to be in person during DEFCON in the
Aerospace Village, thanks to the tireless efforts of dozens of people involved behind the scenes,
we're instead streaming to you live throughout the event. Not only has the game itself been adapted
to allow for remote participation from our eight teams over VPN, but the spectator experience has
changed as well. There are many different ways you can now experience HackASAT. For a simpler
interface, just visit hackasat.com with a web-based scoreboard, these periodic live updates streamed
and links to other resources. For a more immersive experience, head over to virtual.hackasat.com
where you can get all of the above and more, including watching our satellites live via one
of four dedicated webcam feeds, get more technical game data from the 3D octagon scoreboard, as well
as many other resources about our competitors, the flatsats, the technologies involved in space,
and even communicate with other viewers in a dedicated chat and have a few social interactions.
No need to remember all that just now though, all you have to remember is that you can find it all
on hackasat.com and virtual.hackasat.com. The HackASAT team is also partnering with the
Aerospace Village, one of the many villages you'd normally get to experience in person at DEF CON.