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Government aside, it’s an extremely standard CTF format to have an online qualifier, and is (more or less) how the normal DEFCON CTF itself works.

Compare this to something like the “Voting machine village” at the last several defcons - none of which required extensive vetting before you were allowed to hack the hardware.

> Are Canadians allowed to participate? How about Russians? What about crypto-anarchists who will never pass a military-type background check?

Yes. As long as there's at least one US citizen or permanent resident on your team, and you're not a specially designated national, you're allowed to participate.

>> The Team Leader must be a U.S. citizen, must speak English and will serve as the official technical point of contact for communications with the HAS organizers.

So ya, Canadians are allowed but only if the boss is a US citizen. Don't see any resident language. I make the point because some of the best satellite spotters/finders/hackers are Canadians, such Scott Tilley who was recently in the news for finding a long-forgotten navigation sat. Or Ted Molczan who may have spotted the legendary Prowler sat.

(This is natural. Canadians are better positioned to spot satellites due to their darker sky and the longer dawn/dusk periods of higher latitudes.)

> allowed but only if the boss is a US citizen

official technical point of contact for communications != boss

I'd argue that "Team Leader" means "boss," though.

In the hackathon environments I've been in there isn't really an organizational hierarchy per team. Team Leader really means Team Representative; i.e. they only want one person coming up to give/receive items/documents/information, so they ask each team to pick a leader who can interact with the event staff.

Is there an actual problem here? Canadians benefit a lot from US Defense spending. This is not an unreasonable ask.

> Are Canadians allowed to participate? How about Russians? What about crypto-anarchists who will never pass a military-type background check? I cannot think of a less hacker-friendly competition.

The answers to your questions are in the rules.

https://www.hackasat.com/rules-here

This is pretty obviously a recruiting event.

Makes sense that they only want potential recruits to participate.

>> .. the ultimate challenge: to (ethically) hack a satellite.

.. which will be used to coordinate drone attacks on foreign targets. So much for ethics ..

60GHz is covered in IEEE 802.11a - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ad

On earth. Its use in space is another matter covered by different rules.

If you don't meet the criteria, presumably they'd rather you trade any hacks you find with a different interested party happy to pay for the information?!

The whole point of the exercise is to recruit good people into the military. That means they've got to know who's doing the hacking.

It could have changed since I last looked at it, but all of the cyber jobs were transfer-only within the Air Force and you had to sign 6 years I believe.

Army has direct commission positions open for cyber officers. 1LT up to LTC

Could ITAR have something to do with the need for a vetting process?

ITAR = International Traffic in Arms Regulations

https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/ddtc_public?id=ddtc_kb_article_...

> the one operating on 60 GHz so that it cannot be heard from the ground directly

Isn't that the same frequency for ground-based 5G mmWave?

Yes. It is absorbed by moisture in the atmosphere. That limits its range, which is great if you want to setup lots of cellular towers without them interfering with each other. If 5g used a frequency that wasn't absorbed, individual towers would have to be much further apart, increasing "cell" size and limiting available bandwidth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_high_frequency

I read a paper about that. It said that 98% of the energy emitted at that frequency is absorbed by oxygen, and this was touted as a benefit, because it effectively “insulated” the towers, so they would not interfere with each other. But I am still surprised that any engineer would design a system that is only 2 percent efficient.

At scale all radio is absorbed by something... mostly not your recipient's antenna.

or continues propagating into the endless depths of space

Sure. Unlikely for 5G towers given frequencies and location.

In the US, the current licensed 5G millimeter bands are 24, 28, 37, 39 and 47 GHz. 60 GHz is an unlicensed band (actually 57 to 71 GHz) used for 802.11ad. Typical use is uncompressed HDMI extenders inside of a single room.

I'd bet they're most certainly doing this so smart kids are brainwashed and drink the kool-aid of warmongers.

> Anti-MIC comment

Depends on where you draw your ethical boundaries? I mean it's a lucrative career in itself and you get to work in cutting edge tech that hopefully never gets proliferated to other countries (esp. the oppressive ones).

Saudi Arabia says Hi and thanks for the nuclear!

The US society is great, but the US government is oppressive and responsible for murders and destruction. There is a clear line between society and a state/government.

>Which rockets it’s on ?

It’s kinda dangerous as you might know rockets and missiles operate on the same principles ?

They both have a guidance system that decide where to land or not land.

It just that rockets don’t have a warhead.