Team mHACKeroni, a group of Italian ethical hackers sponsored by BV TECH, wonHack-A-Sat, a competition held by the U.S. government and focused on space systems security, now in its fourth year. The goal of the competition, held in Las Vegas during the world-famous Def Con cybersecurity conference, was to breach the security systems of a U.S. satellite so as to take control of it.

The competition is based on the model of Capture the flag challenges, steal the flag in Italian, in which two teams compete by looking for vulnerabilities in computer systems. In the case of the Hack-A-Sat, however, the final challenge involved taking control of a real orbiting satellite, called Moonlighter.
In this way, cybersecurity experts are able to assess the actual tightness of their protocols, vulnerabilities potentially exploitable by hostile hackers, and also test the offensive potential of allies.

Since 2018, the Mhackerons have qualified four times for the Def Con Hack-A-Sat finals, finally reaching the top in 2023 and winning the $50,000 raffled off by the U.S. Space Force and Air Force, the U.S. Department of Space Defense and the U.S. Air Force, which sponsored the competition. The Italian team prevailed over finalists from Poland and Switzerland.