The 2026 International Cybersecurity Challenge, a two-day event billed as the "World Cup of Cybersecurity," was held on the Gold Coast. Student teams from Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Australia competed.
Competition Format
In the "attack and defence" challenge, teams received identical programs with intentional bugs. They were required to identify and fix those bugs, then exploit them to attack other teams.
Results
- Team Europe won its fifth consecutive victory.
- Team USA placed second.
- Team Oceania placed third.
Voices from the Field
"Basically the best way to secure a system, is to have someone hack it for real and point out all the holes."
— Rohan van Klinken, Team Oceania
"If you're working on criminal psychology, you need to know how a criminal thinks so you can help police catch criminals. It's the same for cybersecurity — you need to know how a hacker thinks and how a hacker works."
— Avery Armstrong, Team Oceania
"Companies want to pay people to try and hack them first... If I can find a weakness in a company and tell them about it and they can fix it, that's a lot better than some bad guy coming in and breaking it."
— Jayden Young, Team Oceania
"The threats we face today are persistent, fast-moving and borderless. No one sector, no one government, no one nation, can meet them all alone."
— Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness, Australia's Cyber Security Coordinator
"The industry faces an ethical battle," with threats ranging from financial loss to personal harassment.
— Professor Liesl Folk, UQ's Executive Dean of IT
Team Oceania used AI three years ago to "mirror" another team's attack, demonstrating creative thinking by cyber operators.
— Professor Ryan Ko, Director of UQ's Cyber Research Centre
Context
According to the article, 84,000 cybercrimes costing $2.1 billion were reported in Australia in 2024-25.