SKT Red Team Finishes Fourth in DEF CON Hacking Contest Finals

SK Telecom's Red Team finished fourth in the finals of 'DEF CON 34 CTF,' the world's largest hacking competition. The DEF CON CTF pits security experts from around the world against one another in analyzing system vulnerabilities (weak security points) and in attack and defense skills. This year, 686 teams entered the qualifiers, with only 12 advancing to the finals.

SKT's Red Team is a unit that probes the company's systems for security weaknesses by simulating real hacker attacks. It differs from ordinary development and security teams in that it seeks infiltration paths from an attacker's perspective.

During the competition, SKT members deployed AI as an agent to analyze code and security patches. When an opposing team applied a patch, the AI analyzed the changed code structure and searched for routes to bypass existing defenses. Humans judged and verified whether the attack possibilities suggested by the AI were actually exploitable. "The AI explores multiple possibilities first, and humans make the final call," said team member Lee Ji-hoon.

Despite some of its systems malfunctioning on the first day of the competition, Cold Fusion climbed into the middle of the pack from day two. On the final day, it narrowed the gap with the third-place team to 2,000 points just 30 minutes before the contest ended.

Member Jung Hyeop said the goal is to improve the ranking at the next competition using enhanced AI agents. Member Lee Ji-hoon expressed interest in developing a security-specialized AI model trained on security vulnerabilities and related reports, though securing the computing resources and hardware needed to train the model remains a challenge.