Saudi Arabia will host the international Black Hat event in mid-November, the largest cybersecurity event in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), bringing together the most important cybersecurity experts worldwide.

The event is organized in cooperation between the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones (SAFCSP) and Informa Tech, in partnership with the General Entertainment Authority (GEA), as part of the Riyadh Season 2022 activities.

The three-day event starts on Nov. 15 at the Riyadh Front Center.

The Black Hat event brings together a group of the most prominent experts and speakers in the field of cybersecurity, with more than 200 officials of the most important authorities in the world.

Black Hat includes training courses with accredited certificates, sessions, workshops, and several competitions with prizes amounting to more than $266,000.

The event targets experts, amateurs, and those interested in cybersecurity.

It also includes an activity area sponsored by NEOM. It has a “Capture the Flag” competition, where competitors take on many challenges to gather the largest number of flags, such as exploiting the loopholes of websites, digital forensic analysis, reverse engineering, encryption, and others.

The competition includes the participation of 1,000 contestants representing 200 teams from 35 countries, competing over three days for the competition prizes, amounting to $186,000.

The activity area also includes the “Gap Rewards Platform” competition, which motivates participants to discover security gaps in actual companies and the total prizes totaling $80,000.

The activity area also includes the “Cyber Village,” with six different challenges, including the car hacking challenge, which aims to educate security experts about the functions of vehicle systems and provide them with practical experience.

The second is the unlocking challenge, a physical security experience where visitors can identify weaknesses in different locks.

The room escape challenge is based on team cooperation, where the contestants solve a series of puzzles within a limited time frame.