The Cybersecurity Writing Contest: Final Round Results Announced!

Hackers, Assemble! The final round’s results announcement of the Cybersecurity Writing Contest by Twingate & HackerNoon are now live!

This contest is one of the most happening contests to date. The numbers speak for themselves:

• We published total of 364 stories during the contest (the acceptance rate at HackerNoon is almost 50%)!
• Total reads generated was > ONE MILLION (1,069,876 to be exact)
• Total reading time generated so far: 4 months, 25 days, & 16 hours

The success of this contest is because of the whole HackerNoon community! Shoutout to our super-dope 35k+ contributors and millions of awesome readers!

As usual, we picked all the stories tagged with the #cybersecurity tag on HackerNoon, published in November 2022. Then we chose the top stories using 60:30:10 weightage respectively to:

• Number of hours read
• The number of people reached
• The freshness of the content

The Cybersecurity Writing Contest: Nominations and Winners:

1. Scanning 2.6 Million Domains for Exposed .Env Files by @sdcat

2. Pros and Cons of Cybersecurity Automation by @zacamos

3. Disinformation-as-a-Service: Content Marketing’s Evil Twin by @verasmirnoff

4. Secure Coding Practices Every Developer Should Know by @gloriabradford

5. Why You Should Avoid Using Public WiFi by @juxtathinka

6. Your USB Gadget Could Be Weaponized by @fatman

7. An Insecure Pillar in Cybersecurity by @hal9000

8. Cybersecurity Myth-Perceptions by @shanni

9. Top Emerging Cybersecurity Threats and How to Prevent Them From Happening to You by @induction

10. America's Strangest Unsolved TV-Hack and The Story Behind It by @strateh76

Now let’s see who won 👀

FIRST place goes to

https://hackernoon.com/your-usb-gadget-could-be-weaponized?embedable=true

One only has to look at the top influencers on Instagram or TikTok to see how a group could be easily persuaded to buy the next cool gadget. An exploit that you can plug into your computer, like USB-based plasma balls, fans, Mini-fridge, coffee warmers, LEDs, or even a charging cable.

Well deserved, @fatman. You have won $600!

In SECOND place, we have

https://hackernoon.com/americas-strangest-unsolved-tv-hack-and-the-story-behind-it?embedable=true

On November 22, 1987, Chicago sports commentator Dan Roan covered the best moments of an American football game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. It was a regular newscast following the evening news on local WGN-TV, of which Roan hosted several hundred.

At 9:14 p.m., the reporter disappeared from the TV screens.

Congratulations @strateh76, on securing second place! You won 300 USD!

The third position and most-read story award goes to

https://hackernoon.com/scanning-26-million-domains-for-exposed-env-files?embedable=true

Since almost every web application accesses a database or uses some APIs to communicate with, these credentials must be passed to the application. If this is done using the .env file, the credentials are in plain text in this file. When the web server is misconfigured and this .env file is delivered by the web server, anyone can query this data. To do this, one can visit just a URL with a browser, such as: https://example.com/.env.

The dangerous aspect is that the passwords and secrets are in unencrypted form in the .env file.

Excellent story, @sdcat; you have won $200!

Let’s wrap up the announcement! We will contact the winners shortly. Keep an eye on contests.hackernoon.com to see the current and upcoming writing contests!