The Brooklyn campus of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) will be the nerve center this week for the world’s biggest hacking competition, as more than 10,000 participants from across the world compete in the preliminary round to find the best student teams.
Nearly 1,000 teams, from Australia to Zimbabwe, have already registered for the preliminary round of the competition, which begins at 6 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, and will continue until Sunday. Organizers expect to exceed the record-breaking number of 1,357 teams that signed up last year and easily outpaced the perennial leader in the so-called Capture the Flag software hacking competitions. They are designed to find and challenge the best emerging cyber security talent and to encourage students to pursue careers and fill the acute shortage of trained professionals in the field.