The most valuable hacker is Portuguese

10th April 2018

André Baptista is a researcher of INESC TEC’s Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems and holds a Master’s Degree in Information Security from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto.

During the competition, which was held in Washington D.C. (USA) on 24 and 25 March, participants from all over the world had to test security breaches on the Mapbox website and software. André Baptista found five vulnerabilities and stood out because of his singularity in finding bugs and for his team effort, thus receiving a € 7, 300 award.

“In the increasingly globalised world we’re living in, it is only natural that there is a need for large corporations to protect themselves from the vulnerabilities they are exposed to. As a hacker I need to know how to find these vulnerabilities and address them, in order to ensure the financial stability of a given corporation”, highlights the INESC TEC’s researcher, who admits that he was very pleased about this recognition.

André Baptista was selected to participate in this US competition after writing a report describing the vulnerabilities of a mobile app.

The H1-202 competition was organised by HackerOne, a platform known for recruiting hackers to solve security problems in order to make the internet safer. André Baptista is already invited to participate in future competitions promoted by HackerOne.

Besides participating in this competition, André Baptista also had the opportunity to speak about security ethics at a meeting with high school students of the capital of the USA.

For more information:

Joana Desport Coelho

Communication Service                                                                                                                               

INESC TEC

FEUP’s Campus

Rua Dr Roberto Frias

4200-465 Porto

Portugal

T +351 22 209 42 97

M +351 91 911 97 21

joana.d.coelho@inesctec.pt

Porto, 10 April 2018