NCC Group team score high in the world's first open 5G Cyber Security Hackathon

Our consultants, Philip Marsden and Ross Bradley demonstrated their skills last weekend when they came second in the 5G Ultrahack Ericsson challenge in Finland.

With 5G networks offering greater connectivity and faster wireless broadband, it’s being predicted as a significant development compared to previous mobile communication networks. With that comes the exponential technology development to take advantage of this from home networks to critical national infrastructures.

This Ultrahack challenge offered the hackers three real-life use cases for 5G to work on – a future 5G hospital, a 5G Ericsson black box target and Nokia’s 5G home network security system.

The hackathon isn’t just a bit of fun – they play a really crucial part in the design and engineering process for network equipment manufacturers to ensure the security and safety of users. Each company putting forward a use case for hacking also offering up bug bounty prize money, which is shared among the best hacker(s) /team(s).

While details of what they found are subject to non-disclosure agreements, the exercise itself was a great demonstration of our Telecommunication Practice’s capability.

Stuart Begg, technical director for NCC Group’s Telecommunication Practice said: “NCC Group is at the forefront of 5G security working with network equipment manufacturers and operators alike. Phil and Ross have demonstrated our technical capabilities in this area - well done to them and well done to us!”

To find out more about this challenge and others visit the Ultrahack website: https://ultrahack.org