Students from Royal Holloway have won The Cyber Crime Cup™ 2019, the first time a cyber security competition has been held live as a spectator eSport.
Cyber Crime Cup 2019 winning team from Royal Holloway
Organised by members of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and sponsored by BT, the challenge was to hack a fictional internet banking site. Each team started the competition without a bank account and had to set one up.
The winners of the Cyber Crime Cup were the team that stole the most amount of money – and team SegFault Squad managed to steal £27,000 in just half an hour.
The winning team were Joshua Sawyer, Tom Bailey, Oliver Graham, Cameron Jones and Isaac Scarisbrick, who won £1,000 and said: “We entered mostly because we wanted to have fun.
“We’re friends and we’re looking at info security. It was a surprising experience - a good opportunity to learn, and was very relevant to computing and to the future. It’s nice that we can showcase our Royal Holloway University’s excellence in cyber security too.”
Dr Carlos Matos, Head of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, added: "Competitions like these cover some of the current cyber security challenges that society is facing and allow participants to demonstrate the critical skills needed to address them.
"I am especially impressed by the way the Royal Holloway team came together, applying their cyber security skills wisely and working effectively under pressure through incremental challenges against some high calibre competition - many congratulations to all involved for winning the Cyber Crime Cup."
The event was held live at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester in front of an audience of 360. Teams from 10 universities competed for three hours, then a final play-off was held between the two top teams.
The audience watched the challenges as they happened via giant screens around the auditorium and there was live commentary from Katarina Tasiopoulou from IBM and organiser, BCS member Adrian Thompson.
The Royal Holloway team were presented with an incredible 5-foot-tall silver trophy and £1,000, and runners up shared an additional £1,500 between them.
Initially, more than 200 students from 65 teams at 35 universities entered the competition and completed a series of online qualifying rounds to go through to the final.
Adrian Thompson, Chair of the BCS Preston and District Branch said: “It was an amazing event and we’re really pleased with how it all turned out. Up until now, cyber security has never been considered an eSport, but this event changed that.”
Royal Holloway has a thriving programme of education in Information Security and Computer Science, linked to an outstanding research record and long-standing, deep engagement with industry and government.
Cyber Security degrees at Royal Holloway
Recognised by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, Royal Holloway offers undergraduate BSc/MSci degrees in Computer Science (Information Security) with provisional certification by the NCSC, and a one year Masters in Information Security which is fully certified by NCSC.
