INESC TEC’s researcher considered the most valuable hacker

André Baptista, researcher of INESC TEC’s Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems (CRACS), was awarded the title of “The Most Valuable Hacker” at the international live hacking event H1-202, that took place on 24 and 25 March in Washington D.C.

After writing a report describing the vulnerabilities of a mobile app, André Baptista was one of the two Portuguese hackers selected to participate in this US competition.

During the competition, the participants had to test security breaches on the Mapbox website and software. André Baptista stood out because of his singularity in finding bugs and for his team effort, thus receiving a €7,300 award.

“In the increasingly globalised world we’re living in, it is only natural that there is a need for large corporations to protect themselves from the vulnerabilities they are exposed to. As a hacker I need to know how to find these vulnerabilities and address them, in order to ensure the financial stability of a given corporation”, highlights the INESC TEC’s researcher.

The researcher admits that he was very pleased when major entities in IT security acknowledged his merit.

Besides participating in this competition, INESC TEC’s researcher also had the opportunity to speak about security ethics at a meeting with high school students of the capital of the USA.

HackerOne platform, which was started by hackers and security leaders in order to make the internet safer, organized the H1-202 competition. A cyber security event which intends to test different hacker’s ability in finding securities breaches in both software and hardware.

The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC.