Episode 4 (2020): Alex Dean Cybulski - Hacker Culture Is Everything You Don't Get Paid For In the Information Security Industry

Alex Dean Cybulski is a PhD candidate at the University of
Toronto's Faculty of Information. Presently, he is writing a
dissertation on capture the flag competitions, play and games in
hacker culture and the information security industry.


In this session he will talk about the field he is studying –
specifically Capture the flag (CTF). It is a competitive game in
which players mimic the experience of discovering and exploiting
vulnerabilities in information systems, hacking into simulated
software and/or networks to retrieve data known as a ‘flag.’ CTF
participants, often drawn from the information security and IT
industries utilize these games as a means of training to
develop/apply offensive security knowledge in a legal way, so
that they can better defend the software/systems they are
entrusted with. 
 
This presentation will discuss preliminary findings of his
research: ethnographic, semi-structured interviews with a team of
players at an on-site CTF who also share the same workplace.