What Is China’s “Huwang” Cybersecurity Exercise and How to Earn Up to 3K ¥/day?

The annual "Huwang" (Network Protection) action is a nationwide cybersecurity red‑blue exercise organized by the Ministry of Public Security, targeting real network assets across the country.

It aims to discover, expose, and resolve security issues, testing the defensive capabilities and emergency response of major enterprises and government agencies.

Participants are divided into a Red Team (attackers) and a Blue Team (defenders). The Red Team may use any method for a month to breach the Blue Team’s network and leave a marker; the Blue Team must monitor 24 hours and defend against attacks.

Red Team members include national cyber‑security experts and vendor penetration testers; Blue Team members are randomly selected units.

Scoring: successful attacks earn points for the Red Team; the Blue Team starts with 10,000 points and loses points for each breach. Since 2021, the Blue Team must detect, respond, and recover attacks to minimize deductions, with extra points only for finding real hacker activity.

The exercise is conducted at three administrative levels:

National level: typically starts in July/August, lasting 2‑3 weeks.

Provincial level: dates set by each province, lasting about 2 weeks.

Other levels (e.g., industry‑specific): usually about one week.

Because of the rapid growth of big data, IoT, and cloud computing, network attacks have become a national security challenge, making the "Huwang" action a critical component of China’s cyber‑defense strategy.

Financially, participants can earn between 1,500 ¥ and 3,000 ¥ per day; a 15‑day stint can bring 20,000 ¥‑50,000 ¥, making it an attractive opportunity for cybersecurity talent.

Alumni of the training institute can obtain internal referral slots by contacting the institute’s instructor via WeChat, facilitating their enrollment in the upcoming 2023 "Huwang" action.