Pinoy students top int'l cybersecurity tilt

Students from the Philippines bested 12 finalists from other countries in the recently concluded regional preliminary round of the Kaspersky Lab Asia Pacific and Middle East, Africa (MEA) Cup 2012.

 

Winning the first and second prizes respectively in the conference last March 14 to 16 at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) are research papers by Philippine team leaders Joshua Arvin Lat, 21, and Ranyel Bryan Maliwanag, 19.

 

"Both Filipino students are from the University of the Philippines Department of Computer Science (UP-DCS). They said they carried out their researches at the department’s Computer Security Group," Kaspersky said.

 

The annual event gathers students and young professionals from around the world to collaborate on issues involving cybercrime.

 

Kaspersky said this was the first time the Philippines joined the annual conference, which has this year’s theme of “IT Security for the Next Generation.”  

 

"Their wins in the Asia Pacific and MEA Cup 2012 have earned for Lat and Maliwanag their respective spots to represent the Philippines in the 2012 Kaspersky International Cup of the IT Security Conference for Young Professionals to be held at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands on May 11-13, 2012," Kaspersky said.

 

In the Hong Kong round, the research papers were presented and defended by Lat and Maliwanag before a panel of judges composed of experts from Kaspersky Lab as well as notable academicians and information technology experts from the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong. 

 

The undergraduate students from UP competed with tertiary and post-graduate students from the Asia Pacific, Middle East and African regions.

 

Selection was based on scientific and methodological level of work, the social importance of the topic presented, completeness, objectivity with collected information, as well as practical and innovation value in different areas ranging from technical, social, economic to legal topics.

 

“The quality of papers presented was of a very high standard with much thought and creativity having been put into the content,” said Veniamin Ginodman, Head of Educational Programs Management at Kaspersky Lab.

 

A total of 52 papers were submitted to this year’s conference, five of which were from the Philippines.

 

In Southeast Asia, only Malaysia and the Philippines made it to the Asia Pacific & MEA Cup 2012.

 

“This conference has again brought together the best from the Asia Pacific and MEA region with excellent support from internationally recognized academicians and analysts,” said Harry Cheung, Managing Director for Kaspersky Lab Asia Pacific.

 

“The cyber world is youth-driven and the contribution of the young participants in furthering knowledge on cybercrime will significantly add to the body of work now available,” he added.

 

Paper on secure authentication system

 

Lat and partners Kevin Charles Atienza and Rod Xavier Bondoc wrote the paper “SOUL Sytem: Secure Online USB Login System,” which recommended a secure online authentication system involving a two-factor authentication scheme using a password and an ordinary USB flash drive as a security token.

 

The group took home US$1,500 in cash prize for their winning paper.

 

Voice recognition app

 

Maliwanag and his team, including Mariah Strella Indrinal and Marynyriene Silvestre, created an application that uses voice recognition.

 

Their research entitled “Vox-Grid: A Mobile Voice Verification System” proposed a mobile voice verification system to improve the security of the username-password authentication scheme.

 

This won for the group a US$1,000 cash prize.

 

On the other hand, the third place winner was the research paper entitled “Mining Modules’ Dependencies for Malware Detection” by Masoud Narouei from the Shiraz University of Iran. He won a cash prize of US$750.

 

Next round

 

Kaspersky Lab will sponsor the all-expense paid trip of the Philippine team leaders to the global round.

 

This time, they will be competing against the winners of the three other regional preliminary rounds held in America, Europe and Russia & Commonwealth of Independent States.

 

"Lat and Maliwanag as well as the other participants stand a chance to win the cash prize of 3,500 euros plus the opportunity of an internship at Kaspersky Lab or a visit to a professional Information Security conference together with the company's experts. 

 

Ginodman said Kaspersky Lab is committed to continue holding this student conference annually as a platform to engage in open discussion and knowledge-sharing to develop shared strategies and solutions to combat the relentless evolution of cyber threats.

 

"We hope that with more knowledge-building and sharing activities, the region will have an excellent youth brain trust when it comes to cyber security-related issues. Clearly, there is much potential here that has not been fully tapped yet,” he said. — TJD, GMA News