Hacking Contest Seeks to Attract Women to Information Security
L33tdawg: "... also at a level that wasn't overwhelming" - Is it just me, or does that sound quite demeaning?
Computer security conferences tend to be male-dominated affairs. It's not that women aren't present, but just not anywhere near their normal proportional representation in society.
To address the disparity, the Power of Community (POC2012) security conference in Seoul held the final round of a hacking contest on Thursday appropriately called the "Power of XX," a women-only skills battle intended to spur interest in the field and also at a level that wasn't overwhelming.
The competition, also sponsored by the Sookmyung Information Security Study, a club that is part of the computer science department at Sookmyung Women's University's engineering school in Seoul, started with 48 teams. Eight teams made the final round, and they worked throughout the day to solve challenges in areas such as web application attacks, programming, system hacking and cryptography.