Igor Sikorsky team "dcua" is recognized to be the first among more than 12 thousand of "white" hackers teams all over the world in CTFtime rating in 2016 that can be seen on the site https://ctftime.org.
The rating includes results of participation of teams in numerous competitions in the field of information security and is nearly the best in the world. It is worth to mention that there are thousands of teams that represent popular universities and large companies of USA and other countries and considered to be world leaders in computer technologies development are left behind our team in this rating. The rating itself consists of the points that their team has scored in international competitions during the year. In 2016, results of nearly 70 competitions that were hold on-site and online were included into rating.
Specialists that are able to detect how protected is the system from external attacks and cyber criminals and provide it with effective security are called "white" or "ethical" hackers. To tell the truth, the specials themselves prefer to use another notion "security researchers" since their task is not to hack someone's computer systems and networks but to research new technologies.
Since 1995 security researchers have been organizing open competitions that allow choosing the best among themselves but also master their knowledge and skills. Their participants take part in network games, so called virtual battles that are generally called CTF standing for "Capture the flag". The name shows the main idea of such cyber games. Particular part or oven the whole information system with some imbedded vulnerabilities start to operate in controlled environment. The game participants have to find these vulnerabilities and with the help of them to hack the system. A particular secret element that is called "the flag" is a proof that the system has been attacked successfully. Actually, this is just the line of random characters.
The team «dcua" was created in 2012. Its permanent leader and trainer is a fellow worker of FTI, Mykola Ilin. His brother, postgraduate of FTI, Kostiantyn Ilin, 5th year student of FTI, Viktor Sytnyk, graduate of FTI Mykola Ovcharuk, graduate of Institute of special communication and information security of Igor Sikorsky, Andrii Danyliuk and other are the members of this team. In general it numbers 43 active players; the most of them are FTI students or graduates. Thus, the first position of our team is the merit of unconditional success of representatives of FTI and other educational subdivisions of our university that proves that security researchers of Igor Sikorsky KPI not only cede but are better at something than their colleagues from the most famous universities and laboratories of the world.