Two members of the Técnico community are part of the team that won 1st place at the International Cybersecurity Championship & Conference (IC3), in California. Pedro Adão, a professor at Técnico was one of the coaches of the winning team – ‘Team Europe’ – which brought together 17 competitors, including the Técnico student Bruno Mendes (Master’s Programme in Computer Science and Engineering). Before the European team left for San Diego, all members gathered at Técnico for the last bootcamp, in preparation for the competition that the team would win.

The event, held in early August, brought together seven teams from all over the world and put them to the test with a series of cybersecurity challenges. These included real-time programming competitions (attack-defend approach), during which the teams had to fix security flaws to keep the servers secure, and use the flaws of the other teams to attack them. There was also a challenge in which, faced with a strategy game with deliberate errors programmed by the organisation, each team developed an artificial intelligence with the aim of taking advantage of these errors in the most effective way possible, in an attempt to win the game.

“These participants don’t just appear out of nowhere – they’re very dedicated people who practice regularly,” explains Pedro Adão, who is also a member of the organising committee and has been involved in this type of training activities since 2014. Even though everyone wants to win the competition, “there’s great camaraderie and togetherness” among the participants, he adds.

Bruno Mendes gives positive feedback on his experience as a player. “Being part of a team of this size was an enriching and unforgettable experience”, he says. The student points out that, given the common interest and even the high competition atmosphere, “it wasn’t difficult to create bonds of empathy with the other team members and with the participants from the other teams”.