South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) said on Aug. 10 that South Korean team 0x4b52 and South Korea-U.S. joint team SuperDiceCodeLovers placed second and third, respectively, in the finals of “2026 Defcon CTF 34” held in Las Vegas from Aug. 6 to 9.

Defcon CTF is an international hacking competition held during the U.S. cybersecurity conference Defcon. Teams rank by finding and fixing vulnerabilities in servers provided to them while also attacking other teams’ servers to score points.

0x4b52 is a South Korean team made up of domestic security researchers and white-hat hackers. It is the highest finish since a South Korean team placed third in 2022 for a team composed only of South Koreans at Defcon CTF.

SuperDiceCodeLovers is a joint team that includes South Korean and U.S. security experts. The team also placed third in 2024 and last year.

A total of 686 teams took part in this year’s Defcon CTF online qualifiers, and 12 advanced to the finals. From South Korea, six teams reached the finals.

Many mentors and graduates from domestic white-hat training programmes, including the Best of the Best (BoB) next-generation security leader programme and WhiteHat School (WHS), were included among the teams that advanced to the finals.

BoB and WHS mentors and graduates also presented research results at the Defcon conference, including an open-source AWS attack scenario based on real-world security incidents and Windows privilege escalation vulnerabilities.

Choi Woo-hyuk (최우혁), director general of the Information Security and Network Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "South Korea’s information security talent once again proved outstanding skills and competitiveness at the world’s most prestigious international hacking competition." He added, "We will continue to foster top-level information security talent with hands-on capabilities so they can respond proactively to cyber threats that are becoming more sophisticated in the AI era."