News, Contributions and Achievements

Roheender dreams of becoming an expert in smart contract security. Recently, he suggested that we give him an opportunity to attend DevCon SEA in Bangkok, one of the largest tech conferences for Ethereum enthusiasts.

We are always pleased to see alumni like Roheender who have clear goals. We encourage MCC alumni to pursue their dreams and make them a reality. Thanks to our MCC2024 0day-Hacker sponsor, MOROSNET, we were able to gather some funds to support his attendance this year.

Ref: https://morosnet.com/project/rehack-malaysia-cybersecurity-camp/

Fira was recently chosen and sponsored to represent Malaysia at the 2024 APCERT-FIRST Regional Symposium in Taipei, Taiwan, through their Fellowship program. This initiative, supported by the APNIC Foundation, empowers women in cybersecurity and delves into important topics like incident response and AI-driven threat analysis. A standout moment for her was connecting with inspiring women leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region.

Ref:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7262680752192966658/

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kleeaiken_apcert-cybersecurity-apcert-ugcPost-7261770376706162689-g-D_

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7260435875140902912-URdw

On 9th November, Irfan, a.k.a Capang had his opportunity to share with the participants “Introduction to Binary Exploitation”, organised by PEKOM, of where the project manager was Khiew.

This was a a 3-hour workshop full of theoretical explaination and hands-on material to allow participants to explore binary exploitation either in CTF or real-life vulnerability research.

Oh wait? Who are these two?!!
Introducing, Capang and Khiew, our MCC2024 batch!

Ref:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gnapac_my-first-physical-workshop-as-a-speaker-activity-7261388852521500672-DTTU
https://github.com/broCapang/binex_workshop

As we approach the end of October 2024, Hazim shared that he received his first Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) designation for a security issue he identified in Apache NiFi. He responsibly reported the issue, which has now been confirmed as fixed in the latest release from the Apache NiFi team.

Congrats Hazim!

Ref:

https://nifi.apache.org/documentation/security

It seems that RE:HACK successfully organised the Girls in CTF event again this year! What makes it even more interesting is that this year’s event was fully organised by the RE:UN10N members, who are all alumni of MCC.

The main organisers were Yen Wai, Firdaus, Roheender, and Zach.

And who won the game? Without any bias, MCC Queen demonstrated why she’s the best. Jia Qi was once again crowned the champion, teaming up with another alumni, Emmy!

Ref:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jiaqiyeo_champion-in-girls-in-ctf-gctf-2024-activity-7251411937975017472-pdHK

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emmy-toh-jia-yu-642652248_gctf-gctf2024-cybersecurity-activity-7251247619102908416-T5pg?

Naqib recently went to Yogyakarta under his university Global Islamic Student Outreach (GISO) program and gave cybersecurity awareness sharing to the students of SMA Muhammadiyah and Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM).

More: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7238164978975809536/

Wow! This is amazing. Fira recently went to Taipei, Taiwan under her university program and gave a cybersecurity technical sharing at the Asia Eastern University of Science and Technology!

She shared her experience by discussing 5 types of cybersecurity attacks with the students, and successfully demonstrated a phishing exercise that is commonly conducted by fraudsters. This was part of her initiative to spread cybersecurity awareness during the program.

It seems many of the alumni is now taking a bigger step to challenge themselves at the international stage eh? Awesome Fira!

Reference: https://www.usim.edu.my/news/kembara-mahabbah-memperkasa-ilmu-dan-pertukaran-budaya-antara-malaysia-dan-taiwan/

Among the alumni, Amir is the most hardworking person. He conducted many workshops at UNITEN to promote CTF, basic networking skills and MCC. He is not someone who can easily give up. A true MCC product that we want to create!

Recently Amir conducted another sharing session to the juniors, Ask Me Anything: Diving into CTF World.. Don’t give up Amir! Good things are not easily done.

Kelvin together with Emmy, casually participated in Defcon’s BTV Capture the Flag and secured 12th place!

More: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rehack-xyz_it-was-awesome-when-we-heard-that-some-of-activity-7228607479255810050-NJ3L

We were given again an opportunity to promote MCC and other activities we organised at CyberDSA/SIBERSIAGA this year!

This year, Roheender, Sarah, Fira and Naqib did a very great job attending the crowd while promoting MCC. Roheender also shared his research in Web3 Security which it is available at RE:HACK’s Github now. Sarah, shared her recent research, Evil Portal using m5stack.

References:

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rehack-xyz_cyber-dsa-was-fun-we-had-a-blast-thank-activity-7228241791341191168-SvaC
• https://github.com/rehackxyz/CyberDSA-SIBERSIAGA-2024
• https://medium.com/@ssi51/evil-portal-with-m5stack-cardputer-bruce-firmware-660cc67f8088
• https://medium.com/@MaanVader/introduction-to-web3-and-smart-contract-security-understanding-the-basics-and-common-6bb84442f6fe

Hanan and Firdaus went to Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS to share their knowledge in CTF and basic web attacks!

This is a collaboration between CyberHax UTP and HibiscusLab, sponsored by RE:HACK

Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cyberhaxutp_cybersecurity-techevent-cyberhaxutp-activity-7222027793214160896-ERvQ

Woot! This time the number is growing! There were more than 1 team who consisted of MCC alumni participated in The Amazing CyberHunt UTAR 2024. All of them did outstanding achievements!!!

Congratulations Amir, Sarah, Firdaus, Roheender, Zach, Jia Qi, Megat, Naqib, Fira, Emmy, Wei Ying and some others who we might missed in here 😅

On the 26th and 27th June, Alysha and Sarah attended the first Vulnerability Research based conference in Singapore, led by Jacob Soo from StarLabs Singapore. The Off-by-One Conference definitely not the same as the other conferences we attended before as the contents were all focusing on vulnerability research, fuzzing, kernel exploit and such.

Sarah has shared her experience attending the event here

After the success of the first event, Cyber Skills Level-Up made its appearance again at KICT, IIUM on 8-9 June 2024. This time, it was co-hosted with SIG Cybersecurity IIUM, led by Aniq. It was awesome to see Aniq coordinate the program and be supported by his cool team which included our alumni Nazmy and Hazim.

Not just that, Jia Qi and Kelvin also stepped up their contributions to the community by becoming speakers for the event together with the other four experienced speakers.

The other alumni also attended and were able to catch up with each other during the event.

See: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7205767272475295744/

On 27 May 2024, Sarah was invited as a speaker at the recent Panca D’FTMK Summit, UTeM! She was requested to share with the public about her experience attending and becoming the alumni of Malaysia Cybersecurity Camp.

REHACK carried out their new experiment called Cyber Skills Level-Up which aims to give students some insights into cybersecurity through Capture-the-Flag sharing. The first event was co-hosted with Persatuan Komputer Universiti Malaya (PEKOM), done on the 25th of May 2024.

This is another achievement for MCC alumni as we could see Shafiq and Hassanal involved as part of the PEKOM committee members. At the same time, we had Firdaus and Shen among the trainers!!

Some of the MCC alumni also was there to learn together and provide support to everyone.

See: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rehack-xyz_we-had-executed-our-another-experiment-focusing-activity-7200311913287725056-Cc3L

On the 17th of May, Nazmy and Hazim shared their experience attending Malaysia Cybersecurity Camp 2023 with their peers. On top of that, they also organised a knowledge sharing on Digital Forensics that they gained through MCC, participating in CTF and of course from their self-learning effort.

This session was organised by the IIUM SIG: CYBERSECURITY community. We heard that since 2022, SIG has significantly increased the cybersecurity awareness among the students and their contributions have been praised by their faculty dean!

Good work everyone! Keep spreading the love!

• https://www.instagram.com/p/C7UDDhlv7Es/
• https://www.instagram.com/p/C7UC-nEPgN9/

Oh wait! Fira also participated in this year’s Aturkreatif CTF together with her teammates – TapauSemua. They secured the 2nd place next to Skibidirizz.

There is more! Fira also once again crowned as the champion FOR THE THIRD TIME IN A ROW in the Hackhaton competition, also organised by Aturkreatif.

Fira’s winning Hackathon project, USIMChat, is a game-changer. It’s a LLM-powered chatbot to attend to student queries that ultimately wow the judges. So awesome Fira!

Aturkreatif is an annual event organised by the Computer Science students majoring in Information Security & Assurance (ISA), FST, USIM. For this year’s Aturkreatif Capture the Flag event, which took palce on the 11th of May 2024, team Skibidirizz (yeah, they always come up with a weird name) consists of Naqib, Megat and their friend Akram won the competition!

Even though Danial and Aisyah were both swamped with their final year semester, they still took the time out of their busy schedules to teach their uni-mates about web application vulnerabilities on a Saturday. How cool is that?

As their university didn’t offer a practical cybersecurity course, they both put in a lot of effort to prepare the materials on their own time through self-study and took it upon themselves to create materials for their uni-mates. Their dedication and hard work are truly admirable!

On the 20th of April, Sarah was invited by Google Developer Student Clubs UTeM to deliver a sharing session about basic Linux stuff. Sarah beautifully presented her “Learn Linux by Owning The Game” which attended by 100 students from different local universities.

Read more about it:

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7187994060874244096/
• https://medium.com/@ssi51/overthewire-bandit-walkthrough-06ae0c9da110

Kelvin recently shared his first experience of travelling to Japan and attending BSides Tokyo on April 19th. The sharing was exclusively for MCC alumni and friends. During the discussion, Kelvin shared his insights and knowledge gathered through the talks, from the BSides Tokyo crew members, speakers, and other attendees. He also shared how he prepared for his solo journey to Japan, which was insightful for the listeners.

He also posted his tl;dr version on LinkedIn here

6 of the MCC alumni were selected to receive Black Hat Asia Student Scholarship this year! To be selected, the candidate must show their achievements and contributions to the community. This is a proud achievement as this could be a proof that their achievements and contributions to the community are recognised by the Black Hat Asia Student Scholarship panels.

Well done Amir, Teng, Naqib, Zach, Sarah and Amin! We hope all 6 of you enjoyed the conference.

Last year, TCM Security sponsored us with three valuable PNPT vouchers and Firdaus was one of the lucky participants who received it. Today, we received the good news that he successfully passed the exam!

Congratulations! And thank you TCM Security for sponsoring us and supporting our efforts in building the a quality next-generation cybersecurity practitioners in Malaysia!

We had our first gathering of the year at RNZ Steamboat & Grill. MCC2022 and MCC2023 alumni gathered for the first time and it was fun to meet them. Everyone shared about their current life including working, FYPing, internship and more! We were also joined by other friends including MCC trainers.

Oh also, also congratulations to those who got to the final round and won the top 10 in the RENTAS CTF!

Alfian from our MCC2023 batch conducted a two-day workshop on Digital Forensics and Binary Exploitation at his previous study place, Politeknik Mersing! This is the first sharing session conducted by our MCC2023 batch.

His workshop was attended by approximately 30 students who keen to learn and explore more about the cybersecurity. We are grateful with the support he received from his lecturer, Ms Mas Ayu from the Politeknik Mersing.

His full post about this achievement can be found here

W00t! We are proud to know that three of the MCC alumni were selected to join this year’s Global Cybersecurity Camp! The members were:

• Yeo Jia Qi (MCC2022)
• Roheender Singh (MCC2023)
• Muhammad Firdaus Amran (MCC2023)

Fatah once again stepped-up his game by conducting an online-sharing about “Reverse Engineering and Binary Exploitation: Intel x86/x86-x64 Assembly”. This is a part of his self-learning in pursuing his dream to be someone that is well-known in the Malware Research and Development field.

The sessions were recorded and available at REHACK’s Youtube:

• https://youtu.be/8dGDYRWwawQ (first part)
• https://youtu.be/vWOSPK8p1wE (second part)
• https://youtu.be/xx62TN7NFIY (third part)

REHACK experimented an online Capture-the-Flag competition for female only in December. It was participated by almost 100+ players locally!!

Better, when the top 10 of the competition was won mainly by MCC alumni! Congratulations Yen Wai, Jia Qi, Hanan, Shiau Huei, Emmy, and Wei Ying !!

• https://www.rehack.my/p/projects.html

The hottest CTF competition nationwide, Battle of Hackers (BOH), is back again for the 2023 edition on December 2nd. The competition was divided into two categories, which were ASEAN and local. We are proud to share that our alumni and crews managed to win the following places:

1. 1st runner-up for the local category: Choo, Teng, and ShengHe (Team Cincai)
2. 2nd runner-up for the local category: KS, Kelvin, and Mohin (Team L0stPaR4d0x)
3. 4th runner-up for the local category: Wan, Haidar and his team (Team anti_1337)

Seeing new faces and newcomers in CTF, as well as participation from our new members, MCC 2023 in CTF, is heartwarming. Seeing their consistency in continuously polishing their skills and proving to themselves, especially that they can grow better from time to time, truly makes us feel proud.

On November 25, Hanan did another sharing session on unleashing and exploring the fundamentals of CTF! This open sharing session was organised at UniKL with the intention of exposing beginners to the Capture the Flag competition and how to play the game.

As a CTF player and challenge creator herself, she guided participants during a 3-hour session with fundamental understanding, tips and tricks to solve challenges, as well as her personal perspective as a challenge creator in creating challenges. She also provided hands-on practical and mini CTF challenge for the participants to gain actual experience from!

We hope that her spirit of exposing newcomers and beginners to participating in CTF can increase the level of cybersecurity enthusiasm among students.

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/uniklmiitcssc_attention-to-all-students-activity-7131135332636393472-DmGt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

On the 21st to 24th of November, four teams representing Malaysia arrived in Jakarta to compete in the first Capture the Flag competition by Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), called Asean Cyber Shield. The two teams from the Student Category were participated by Team Cincai and Team Excelsior. Some of the members are from MCC2022 and MCC2023 alumni.

All four teams managed to move to the Final round after able to be the top 5 in each categories. Team Cincai managed to secure 3rd place during this competition and at the same time set a history for Malaysia in the international CTF.

More about this can be read:

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7134770504065777669/
• https://www.astroawani.com/berita-malaysia/kontingen-malaysia-beraksi-cemerlang-di-asean-cyber-shield-hacking-competition-2023-447674
• https://main.aseancybershield.org/notice/116
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGNkZuzQy7Y
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVn2fMC6n0Q

That’s right! We recently have been informed that one of our MCC2022 alumni , Shafiq is currently in Japan as part of his exchange culture program. Even though he is currently in a foreign country, his love in cybersecurity is still burning. On November 11th, Shafiq together with his mate, Irfan attended AVTOKYO, a Computer Security Conference operated by the Japanese Hacker Community. From their feedback, the event was awesome and there were many interesting topics that they learned about especially on the malware and AI topics.

We hope they could still be able to join more cybersecurity events over there and bring back more good memories to be shared with us, here in Malaysia!

Team Cincai – Alvin, Choo, KS and Teng; recently representing Malaysia in Bangkok to compete in an onsite Capture the Flag game organised by ASEAN-Japan Cybersecurity Capacity Building Center.

Competing with the ASEAN teams, Team Cincai managed to solve all challenges on the first day. However, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand were faster than them on that day and leaving them at the 4th place. So close Team Cincai!! But we are proud with you guys!!!

Read it more here:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nacsamalaysia_malaysiamadani-nacsamalaysia-cyberseagame2023-activity-7127999625193521152-zjo5

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ajccbc_ajccbc-activity-7130116343126769664-5jcI

Our future security researcher, Fatah, was invited on November 10th by the organisers from GMI, UTeM, and other sponsors who collaborated to give a technical sharing to all cybersecurity students from both institutions. 

For more than two hours, he managed to share technical information while also teaching the students some technical skills and tricks! The sharing revolves around Assembly Language Programming for Windows x86/x64 for Reverse Engineering and Binary Exploitation, in which he managed to cover 28 topics focusing on the art of Intel processor assembly for Windows and Linux!

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fatah-iix_see-you-guys-soon-activity-7128233872420438016-q3LM?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

On November 4th, Nik Amir together with his friends successfully brought back the Capture the Flag competition in UNITEN. It has been years since the last CTF was held in UNITEN. Amir hopes that with the recent 10:Hats Internal CTF, UNITEN could produces more passionate and talented youth in cybersecurity.

Read it more here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ymiir_kitauniten-operation10-cciuniten-activity-7127855516449460224-bh5Y

In October, we have been informed that, Nik Amir was currently in the middle of organising an internal cybersecurity event for UNITEN under their “Pro-C UNITEN” club. As part of the pre-intro of the event, Amir with their team decided to run a series of beginner-friendly cybersecurity workshop for the students.

Naqib took part in this adventure by volunteered to be one of the speakers and shared a beginner-friendly about Web Exploitation in CTF. He shared some insightful contents to the audience based on his achievements and experience in CTF.

Congrats to you both for stepping up the game! This shows that a collaboration between different universities is possible!

Read it more here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ymiir_dear-connecction-i-thrilled-to-share-my-activity-7127847526610702336-XtdB

The long-awaited Game of Hackers (GOH) that finally returned after two years on October 21st, 2023, uplifted the excitement amongst university students, including our alumni and crews. We are delighted to share with everyone that our crews, alumni, and MCC 2023 managed to ‘hack’ the competition as follows:

1. Champion: Kelvin, Mohin and William (Team L0stPaR4d0x)
2. 1st runner-up: Jia Qi, Zach, and Darrshan (Team DinoDefenders)

Besides winning the competition, Team L0stPaR4d0x managed to be the only team to solve the bounty challenge and was awarded as the bounty winner. Cheers to more achievements to be unlocked by them in the future!

On the night of October 29, 2023, our Abang Tesla, Naqib, makes some time to share with us his tips and tricks to pass the certificate by ISC2, which is Certified in Cybersecurity (CC). He, who just recently passed the examination, told us that it is important to understand our own study habits; however, it is necessary for us to be consistent. He provided alternative platforms that provide certification contents to add his understanding in preparing for the certification.

Besides that, he shared various types of certificates available to be taken for cybersecurity enthusiasts who wish to build and improve their portfolio and chances to get the attention of recruiters. One of the reasons mentioned by Naqib was that ISC2 is one of the organisations that has reputable values that will shine on one’s resume.

We hope that more of our alumni will pass this and other certification exams with flying colours! Let’s wish them good luck!

They did it again. This time during the iTREXC cybersecurity challenges which was held at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC), 19 – 21 October 2023.

Champion – Team Cincai v1.2 – Choo,Teng and ShengHe

2nd Prize Winner – Team DinoDefend3rs – Jia Qi , Zach and Darrshan

3rd Prize winner – Team Darksid3rs – Kelvin, KS and Roheender

4th Place – Team OnlyFood – Naqib, Megat and Akram

Eh, why there are new names highlighted above? They are from MCC2023!!

In celebration of Hacktober and Global Cybersecurity Month, PETRONAS organised the Inter-University 2023 Capture the Flag Competition at KLCC from October 9 to 10.

Performing consistently and as always, we would like to share the success of our MCC 2022 alumni and crews who managed to hit the jackpot and became the winners of this game:

1. Champion: Damien, David, Shiau Huei and Wesley (Team OnlyFeet)
2. 1st runner-up: Aniq, Hazim, Nazmy and Danial (Team 0x94fbr)

Shout out to other alumni who participated in the same competition. What matters most is the experience and knowledge gained and becoming the winners of their enthusiasm.

Teng is actively upskilling himself in reverse engineering domain. On the 24th of September, Teng once again shared some techniques that he learned while solving the CTF challenges from CSAW CTF.

The session was conducted online and the recording is available at REHACK’s Youtube, https://youtu.be/NrvQ5oQuyW0?si=w4A0LlprH-vS9L2v

Team L0stPaR4d0x that was represented by Kelvin, KS and Mohin accomplished some amazing achievements during the BATxAPU CTF 2023, an internal CTF organised together by British American Tobacco and APU which was held on the 2nd of September 2023.

According to them, the ctf was different than regular ctf. They were provided with a scenario where they need to solve a kidnapping case, requires them to go around the campus to obtain challenges while gathering evidence to solve the mystery. The challenges were focused on blue team path, that included Forensics, OSINT, RE, Crypto. At the end of the ctf, they required to create a Forensic Report on the evidence found to summarise the story line, along with the ctf writeup.

On the 6th of September 2023, MCC alumni and crew members were invited to experience Malaysia’s First Experiential Cybersecurity Conference organized by Cybertronium at Connexion Conference & Event Centre (CCEC), Nexus Bangsar South.

The world of Cybertron did not only conferences involving cybersecurity awareness and conference about the current technology that are implemented to defend against cyberattacks, they also demonstrated and showcased a real-life hacking situation that occur through our daily lives. According to the Optimus Prime, Dr Clement Arul, the aim of the event was to expose to the commoners and people with less to none cybersecurity knowledge to truly understand the needs to protect their data and how dangerous can a threat be impacting their organisations or even themselves!
It was truly an honour for our team to be given the opportunity to attend the conferences and observe the demonstrations ourselves. We believe our crew and alumni would definitely gain a lot of practical understanding through the exposure given from the event!

During CyberDSA, our alumni and crews did not miss their chance to gather at the event. Remaining in contact while exploring the event together bonds them together, which warmly creates the synergy of friendship amongst them. They always keep each other updated on their current activities.

While exploring the scene of cybersecurity through visiting vendors, listening to flash talks, and joining the training sessions, our crews and alumni attended the event to support the others who were participating in CTF as well as promote MCC together! Cheers to the bond they created on this journey together.

The Cyber Defence and Security Asia Expo & Conference (CyberDSA), which took place on August 15–17, 2023, at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, is a yearly event that collectively aims to outreach decision-makers in both governments and private sectors to advance their cyber defence and security agenda through the divulgence of the latest knowledge and new trends on cybersecurity while demonstrating innovative technology that will safeguard and promote digital economies and global competitiveness.

During the event, a CTF competition namely Siber Siaga CTF: Code Combat was held for 3 days, from August 14 to 16, 2023. The CTF was first held online for the pre-qualifying round to only bring the top 10 teams to participate in the final round that was held for 2 days, from 15 to 16, at the convention centre live. We would like to applaud our crews and alumni for their enthusiasm, which led them to win the following places:

• David and Kelvin from team Nuts won the first runner-up.
• KS from team Darksid3rs won the 6th place.
• Jia Qi from team DinoDefenders was in the 9th place.
• Aniq from team 0x9fbr was in the 10th place.

May all our crews and alumni’s enthusiasm for diving into the world of cybersecurity never fail them to become big in this scene.

Capture the Flag (CTF) is one of the alternatives to polishing and enhancing practical cybersecurity skills. Depending on the topic, players can deepen their understanding while playing a game by participating in a competition.

Choo, a prominent player from the renowned team Cincai, did a captivating live walkthrough session to share one of his experiences in solving the CTF challenge by code crashing on August 6, 2023. Throughout the 1-hour session, he skillfully unveiled his methods and ‘code crashed’ his way to solving the quest.

This sharing will definitely illuminate viewers in understanding of methods of solving CTF challenges in the future, especially ‘crashing the codes to victory!’

• https://youtu.be/k90BkXCsAJc