As part of a work visit to MIT, Sebastian currently spends a month among the researchers of ALFA Lab, finetuning PenQuest’s bot & AI environment as well as exploring new opportunities for collaboration. Stay tuned for a more detailed write-up on what was discussed and which experiments were conducted with Una-May O’Reilly’s talented team!
The team welcomes Nico Gentilini, research assistant at St. Pölten UAS, who started to work on a scenario creation tool that will be published to the community at the end of 2025. The tool will enable players to design their own game boards and cards and combine them into educational or risk exploration stories.
Sebastian presented our paper “PenQuestEnv: A Reinforcement Learning Environment for Cyber Security” at ICISSP and gave participants a glimpse at the upcoming AI aspects of the game as well as the current client. This is only the beginning: We have big plans to turn the gamified model into an RL-based risk exploration tool that can …
We have just pushed a new minor version onto our public server. The update is all about exploits and credentials, which are now handled way more realistically than before. Additionally, the bot has been reactivated and should now fully support the action point system introduced in version 1.0.0. Check out the patch notes here.
We are happy to announce that we have just published our main paper on the model and mechanics of our cyber defense game, “PenQuest”, in Computers and Security (COSE). If you ever wanted to know how PenQuest works and that the underlying models are, feel free to check it out (open access): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2024.104287
What a journey. After what feels like an eternity we are finally pushing Version 1.0.0 to our live server. Does that mean we are done? Not even close. We have everything until version 1.2.0 planned out and are still working to fix some current issues with the bot. There will always be something to do …
Work on PenQuest is progressing nicely. We have added many new features to the latest client, expanding on how the game realistically depicts cyber attacks. In addition, numerous stability fixes and general code overhauls have come a long way to make PenQuest more playable than ever. Thanks to the team for their ceaseless efforts! As …
In preparation for reinforcement learning and other AI magic, we are currently overhauling the entire backend and middleware. This includes: Alpha players: Please be aware that this might temporarily (re)introduce errors that were not there is earlier versions. Hang in there, we are working on it! Update (May 2024): Overhaul done & most bugs squished!
We held a remote PenQuest workshop at UIIN Unlock conference targeted at lecturers and educators in higher education. The format focuses on digital escape rooms and gamification all across domains, so we felt right at home!
We recently realized that there is a thing called “social media”. This prompted us to create the Twitter account @PenQuestGame where you can find more news, and, most importantly, patch notes for the game. Whenever we update the master branch, we’ll let you know there! Update: Well… X happened. Guess this was it for our …
Another year, another IT security eXchange (ITsecX) at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences. At our PenQuest booth, security professionals and students got the chance to play the latest version of the game and chat with the devs. We collected invaluable tester feedback and are happy to welcome many new penquesters to the fold!
We want you to leave your mark in PenQuest! Come up with an icon (SVG) for an action or piece of equipment and you might soon see your creation in the game! We’ll say thank you by adding you to the team credits and will unlock a unique game avatar for your PenQuest account. Check …
With the biggest audience to date, PenQuest was presented to security professionals and enthusiasts at IKT Sicherheitskonferenz 2022 in Vienna, the largest annual security conference in Austria. IKT SIKON is hosted by the Austrian ministry of defense and attracts over 60 exhibitors. Topics ranging from industrial security and critical infrastructure to (counter-)intelligence and various technical …
Continuing our busy September, Sebastian joined the sec4dev Conference in Vienna to introduce PenQuest to security-interested software developers. Participants could drop in and play the current version of the game at their pace.
PenQuest premiered as education tool in a full-day IT security workshop held at Das Fokus N’Cyan in St. Jakob. Participants from several companies, including the Red Cross, tackled a ransomware scenario and developed strategies for both attack and defense. The actions were then discussed and spiced up with examples, seamlessly integrating PenQuest into an established …
We’re happy to welcome Simon Gmeiner to the team. As a data science student at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, he will work on our AI implementation, beginning with a simple bot and moving up to reinforcement learning.
The team held a PenQuest workshop at LSZ’s Security and Risk Management Congress in Loipersdorf. The event took place onApril 26th and 27th and hosted participants from different companies and institutions. We showcased the latest version of the game and had the chance to talk to security experts from across the field.
We are happy to announce that Thomas and Maximilian have joined the PenQuest team. Thomas is a senior software developer who specializes in front-end development. He will be key in developing new features and improving the overall code. Max is visual designer who will focus on refreshing our current look and feel to be more …
This year’s ITsecX at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences followed the motto “Security Risk Economics: The Value of (Missing) Security” and again welcomed security experts, alumni, and interested techies to an evening of lively IT security exchange. We offered participants the chance to play the current alpha of PenQuest and received invaluable feedback and …
The team was invited to hold a seminar at Uni Luxemburg and engage in an interesting exchange with the local game theory experts. Future collaboration and possible applications of PenQuest to the domain of physical border security was discussed.
The team was happy to present PenQuest at this year’s think tank webinar series at the Austrian Computer Society. There was a lively discussion and we were able to win new testers for our cyber defense game!
Our project has garnered the attention of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s ALFA group, which specializes in Machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, and data science for knowledge mining, prediction, analytics, and optimization. With projects in cyber security and software analysis, the model behind PenQuest was of particular interest to the researchers. The experts at ALFA expressed …