Mokpo National University Wins Top Prize in 'Power Sector Cyberattack Defense Training Competition'

Honam Cybersecurity Conference 'Practical Cyberattack Defense Training in the Power Sector' Competition Grand Prize Winner. ⓒ Asia Economy

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Seo Young-seo] Students from the Department of Information Security at Mokpo National University (President Park Min-seo) won the grand prize at the "Practical Cyberattack Defense Training in the Power Sector" competition held on the 3rd during the Honam Cybersecurity Conference.

According to Mokpo National University on the 8th, this event was held for the first time this year and was jointly hosted by Korea Electric Power Corporation and a branch of the National Intelligence Service.

The Honam Cybersecurity Conference is a cybersecurity conference involving the public, private, and academic sectors in the Honam region, aimed at sharing the latest advanced cybersecurity technologies and discovering local talent.

The conference featured various programs including the Energy Convergence Security Competition, Web Vulnerability Analysis Hackathon, Startup Makethon, and academic conferences.

Recently, although the power industry has become digitalized and intelligent, cyberattacks have become more sophisticated accordingly, and the number of damage cases has increased exponentially.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, the number of ransomware reports surged more than threefold from 39 cases in 2019 to 127 cases in 2020.

In response, Korea Electric Power Corporation conducted practical cyberattack defense training as part of establishing a cybersecurity management system that firmly supports stable power supply and energy transition.

The practical cyberattack defense training held at KEPCO headquarters involved building a virtual simulated power control system similar to real scenarios and was conducted by dividing participants into attack and defense teams.

For four types of cyberattacks, teams had to establish the most accurate and effective defense measures in the shortest time. The attack team included one team from the National Intelligence Service and the National Security Research Institute, while the defense teams consisted of 13 teams from Korea Electric Power Corporation (5 teams), KEPCO KPX, KEPCO KPS, KEPCO KDN, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Chonnam National University, Chosun University, Mokpo National University, and Dongshin University.

In the university division, third-year students Oh Jae-heon and Lee Seong-heon from the Department of Information Security formed a team and took on the challenge. They analyzed files containing malware, identified illegal external communications, and proposed appropriate solutions in their report, such as deleting running programs and malicious files, achieving excellent results.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.