As far as I understand it's competitive hacking/security which requires really solid theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience from various computer relate

As far as I understand it's competitive hacking/security which requires really solid theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience from various computer related topics like: cryptography, reverse engineering, web, low lvl programming, operating systems, networks, protocols, etc, etc. Top competitors tend to work at e.g Google for Project Zero or other big institutions like CERT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_emergency_response_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_emergency_response_te...) or Banks