Carnegie Mellon University’s competitive hacking team, the Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), just won its fifth hacking world championship in seven years at this year’s DefCon security conference, widely considered the “World Cup” of hacking. The championship, played in the form of a virtual game of “capture the flag,” was held August 8-11 in Las Vegas. Five students and alumnae of the Information Networking Institute (INI) competed on PPP's winning team at DefCon27. The team comprised of SIS Alumnus Wai Tuck Wong (pictured in the first row, third from the left), INI students Susie Chang, Jenish Rakholiya, and INI alumnae Erye Hernandez and Carolina Zarate.
Over the course of the 72-hour hacking spree, teams made up of students, industry workers, and government contractors attempted to break into each other’s systems, stealing virtual “flags” and accumulating points. This year's competition involved serveral different operating systems and architecture, and aside from the more traditional-style challenges, there was an iOS application, machine learning challenge, an Xbox game and a Lisp machine. To add drama, team scores were hidden from view on the second day, and scores and rankings were hidden on the last day, sending teams into a hacking frenzy.