Butian Vulnerability Platform: Forging China's Next Generation of White Hat Hackers

From 'Trouser Belt Project' to 'Patching the Sky': Qi An Xin’s Butian platform serves as cradle for nurturing new talent and smelter for refining seasoned hackers’ skills

In our previous posting, Natto Thoughts pointed out the Chinese cyberdefense mindset that, in order to protect one's own business or country, one needs to develop offensive skills. In other postings, the Natto Team has profiled various institutes, cyber ranges, vulnerability research labs, and hacking competitions that companies sponsor in order to nurture China's defensive talent through "attack-defense live-fire exercises" (攻防实战演习) and other offensive skills. One prominent entity that brings these all together and has helped set the standard for this type of training is the Butian (or Bu Tian) Vulnerability Response Platform (补天漏洞响应平台) (Butian Platform). It appears designed to coopt would-be black-hat criminal hackers and young students and mold them into socially useful white-hat hackers, training them to defend China. Along the way, they also develop skills that can be used offensively against China's enemies. The term “white hat talent” (白帽人才) has been frequently used in the Chin…