Registration of candidates for the first-ever nationwide hunt to find Sri Lanka’s most secure coder titled ‘Code Craft’ is now open, organisers said yesterday.

The competition offers more than Rs. 1 million worth cash prizes to the winners of the competition and an all-expenses paid return air-ticket to attend ‘Hacker Halted’ annual international conference in USA, CICRA Holdings Group Director/CEO Boshan Dayaratne said.

Titled ‘CodeCraft’, the nationwide competition is open for university students, professionals, colleges, and corporates engaged in software development. 

“Software development companies that participate in the competition receive exclusive in-detailed report on the security knowledge of their employees, which they can in return market to their clients; the companies can also use the statistics to improve security readiness of their coders if otherwise,” Dayaratne said.

“The competition will bring together existing and aspiring security enthusiasts from all fields of infosec world from the Corporate and Government bodies to academic institutions,” he said.

The competition, that supports country’s target of earning $ 5 billion through software exports and related services by 2022, has been endorsed by Ministry of Higher Education and Highways and Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure, University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka, ICTA Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM). 

“This competition aims to develop the secure coding skills of Sri Lankan Software Developers/Programmers and quality controllers. The students following a degree in software development are also encouraged to apply,” Dayaratne said.

“The competition is conducted through an internationally renowned testing platform of the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants (EC-Council), USA,” he said. 

Candidates interested in registering for the competition can sign up at the official website www.codecraft.lk.

CodeCraft is organised by CICRA – Sri Lanka’s pioneering cyber security training and consultancy organisation and Daily FT – country’s only business and finance newspaper.

Strategic Partners of the competition are Microsoft, London Stock Exchange and Dialog; Official Banker is the Bank of Ceylon.

The competition is supported by Print Media Partners Daily FT, Daily Mirror, The Sunday Times, Lankadeepa, Ada and Virakesari. Electronic Media Partners of the competition are Derana TV, Ada Derena, Derana FM and Derana 24x7.

CodeCraft Competition – How it works

CodeCraft is a competition in which the participants are provided with an online questionnaire based on their domain knowledge of secure programming and they will be tested on their ability to design secure programs.

CodeCraft is an online competition where the programmers will compete at the basic preliminary round, moving on to the semi-finals and finally competing in the grand finale. There will be multiple choice questions and they will have to score the maximum in a limited period of time. There will be negative marking for every wrong answer. Maximum correct answers in the shortest period of time will be the criteria to qualify to the next round of the competition.

After every round 10% of the participants will move to the next round finally moving to the finale.

Format: The event will be conducted in three parts – Preliminary, Semi Finals and Finals leading to identifying the top programmers in our country.