It is the need of the time to protect our sovereignty not only in the air-sea or land borders but also in the internet. But, the cyber forces have not yet been developed in addition to the three forces. Tiger cyber warriors have started this work under the BGD E-Gov CIRT of Bangladesh Computer Council as during the liberation war. Three cyber drills are underway under the direction of Prime Minister’s ICT Advisor Sajeeb Wazed and the supervision of the State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak. The National Cyber Drill 2022 was held in this month- the month of Victory after the inter-university and financial institutions drill.
Organized by Bangladesh Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT), 247 people participated in this 30-hour drill that started in the evening of Digital Bangladesh Day.
Team Disclosify, a team of apprentice cyber warriors, won the crown of the best cyber hero of the year, leaving behind various financial and commercial institutions. The team has reached 7700 numbers by dealing with web exploitation, reverse engineering and hacker attacks that are rampant in the cyber world.
Open source intelligence frameworks, digital forensics and network security have reached the pinnacle of national cyber drills. BRAC University’s BRACU Blinders and Bangladesh Engineering University’s fSociety are the runners-up based on the time of answering by getting equal number of 7600 marks in the competition. DPI Knights, a participating team from Dinajpur Polytechnic Institute, finished fourth with equal points. And in the fifth position is CTF startup VulnSys.
Tasdir Ahmed, a student of Independent University of Bangladesh and the team leader of Team Disclosify, was the first team to beat 53 teams in the country. His teammates were: Md. Rusel Bhuyan, a student of the same university; Hack the Box content engineer Rayhan Ahmed; UITS student Md. Otol Khan and Dhaka State College student Amir Hamza.
CSB Maruf Bin Murtaza led the BRAC University’s BRACU Blinders team, the academic champion and second overall. Shahriar Hasan Mickey, Md. Arafat Sarkar and Md. Rashid Shahriar Shocho were his teammates.
Al Arafat Tanin and his team fSociety of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology- BUET became the Academic Runner-up. His co-fighters were; Tawsif Shahriar, Ataf Fazledin Ahmed, Zuhair Zaki and Abdullah Al Fahad.
Dinajpur Polytechnic Institute Knights team leader Tarek Ahmed Joni thinks that this recognition has made them determined to keep the virtual sky safe in the country. His teammates in the drill were Israt Iman Shah, Mubasher Al Akif, Mosammat Shapla Akhtar and Sajeeb Ahmed.
CTF Startup VulnSys got fifth place in this competition as a cyber-entrepreneur. Co-founders Tariqul Islam, Asif Hossain, Abu Saeed Rahat and Mujtahidul Islam fought under the leadership of team leader Hasibul Hasan Shawon.
The results of the National Cyber Drill show that around 10 banks have participated in this competition. However, the best teams of the financial sector cyber drill held in October did not participate in this national cyber drill. Among the participating banks, Rupali Bank, ranked 18th in the list, is the first among banks and non-banking institutions in this drill. Janata Bank’s Cyber Front Liner is in the second position. And the third position went to Mercantile Bank’s team Xforce.
Team RBL Cyber Warriors participated on behalf of Rupali Bank in this year’s National Cyber Drill. The number obtained by them in the competition was 5500. This team was led by Rupali Bank’s cyber cell team leader- Md. Mamunur Rashid. . He was accompanied by G. M. Faruk Ahmed, Mosharaf Hossain, Md. Shariful Islam and Oyaliul Islam.
The performance of various banks in the National Cyber Drill in 2020-21 was worth noting. Mercantile Bank’s XFORCE ranked 1st and 13th overall that year. Mercantile Bank ranked 4th overall and 1st among private commercial banks in Financial Cyber Drill that year. But this time the bank has been 27th in the national competition. On the other hand, Eastern Bank Limited’s cyber defense team Defend Ace was the first in the Financial Institution Cyber Drill held last October.
The overall support and supervision of the National Cyber Drill held for the 3rd time was the Information and Communication Technology Division and the Bangladesh Computer Council. Tarek M Barkatullah, Project Director of BGD E-Gov CIRT, the organizing body, wants to come to the list of the top 10 countries in the world by 2025 with the cyber heroes participating in the competition.
Among the previous two national cyber drills held in 2021, the drill was championed by Federal Bank Investigation and Silicon Bits. The last runners up were Bytes over Flow and Silicon Bits. And for the first time, the runners-up were The Infinity Bytes and Heimdall.