HALON Hacking Event: a collective and constructive stress test

HALON is for and by the education sector. It offers students and staff the opportunity to improve their ethical hacking skills. And by identifying vulnerabilities, they help make the Dutch education and research sector more digitally resilient.

“We mustn’t look the other way, but rather try to keep up”

Joan Schrijvers is Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Wageningen University & Research (WUR). WUR is also hosting this fifth anniversary edition. She explains: “Cybercriminals are getting better and better at finding vulnerabilities, partly through the use of AI, for example. As a sector, we must not turn a blind eye to these new developments, but rather try to keep up with them. HALON helps to make the sector more resilient and to respond to these new developments.”

For the first time: an internal network made available

During HALON, organisations act as targets: they make part of their infrastructure available to hackers to identify weak spots. Sander van de Geijn, Product Owner for IT Security Services at WUR: “Years ago, we were participants; then we became targets. Now we are targets once again, and we have taken the step of opening up our internal network as well.” He adds: “We are the first institution to do this. In doing so, we are also raising awareness within our own organisation. I’m hoping for a list of valuable findings.”

A new generation of ethical hackers

HALON offers both students and staff in our sector the opportunity to improve their hacking skills within a controlled environment. It also contributes to a safer working and learning environment for the hackers themselves.

Bart, a student at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, says: “I think it’s brilliant to gain experience in ethical hacking in this way. Normally, I carry out penetration tests with just one target, but now there are several. They’re also real organisations, so you can uncover things that really matter.” Ambra, an ICT student at Fontys, adds: “It’s good for our portfolios to be able to take part in a hacking event and gain experience. It ties in well with the projects we’re doing for companies.”

Bart and Ambra are also aware of the potential threat that AI can pose. Alessandro, a student at Radboud University, explains: “I think it’s becoming increasingly important to learn how we can defend ourselves against AI. It’s also great to be able to network with students from other institutions and spend a whole day delving into learning how to hack.”

The results of HALON

The hackers report the vulnerabilities they find to Zerocopter, an organisation that assesses them. Zerocopter, in turn, informs the target organisation participating in HALON, so that it can take immediate action. This year, the ethical hackers found a total of 44 vulnerabilities, a number of which were classified as ‘critical’ or ‘high’.

Examples include vulnerabilities relating to API authentication, old websites that have not been properly decommissioned, issues with password portals and inadequately secured IoT devices, such as security cameras.

The recently published Cyber Threat Assessment 2026 for Education and Research states that the basic measures institutions can take to protect themselves against, for example, hackers and cyber threats remain as relevant as ever. These include, for example, network segmentation and configuration management. HALON helps institutions to gain insight into the effectiveness of these measures and identify areas where further improvements can be made.

Participating target institutions in 2026

Amsterdam UMC, Erasmus University Rotterdam, HZ University of Applied Sciences, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) including the Education Executive Agency (DUO), Naturalis, the University of Groningen, Summa College, SURF, SVO vocational trainer for food, Leiden University and Wageningen University & Research.

Photography: De Beeldredaktie / Sander Koning