Safetech Innovations și Universitatea „Ștefan cel Mare” din Suceava și-au unit forțele pentru competiția „Capture the Flag” 2025
Between November 27–28, 2025, the “Stefan cel Mare” University of Suceava organized, with the support of Safetech Innovations, the tenth edition of the International Students Contest on Information Security “Capture the Flag” (CTF). The competition was held entirely online and brought together 67 teams from Romania and abroad, each consisting of up to four students and coordinated by a teacher. In total, over 270 students from 15 universities and 4 countries participated in this year’s edition.
The competition involved solving various IT security problems by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications and operating systems, in a limited time frame and in a controlled communications environment. The results were uploaded to a dedicated platform that automatically calculated the scores. During the 24 hours that the platform was active, the teams were able to track in real time their score, position in the standings, the time remaining and the evolution of the other participants.
The participating teams demonstrated solid knowledge in data network security, with a focus on several key areas: identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in the OWASP Top 10, recognizing the services and software versions used by web applications and the host operating system, as well as analyzing vulnerabilities associated with these components. The teams also identified public exploits corresponding to vulnerabilities discovered in the services/software versions running on the CTF host.
As a traditional partner of the “Stefan cel Mare” University, Safetech has made available this year the IT infrastructure necessary for the contest (servers, VPN accounts, dedicated contest environments for each team) and, at the same time, through its specialists, it has developed the scenarios of the exercises and the problems that had to be solved. Also, during the competition, Safetech Innovations experts provided support to the participants and got involved in the judging process.
“The collaboration with Safetech has been very beneficial for the University of Suceava from the beginning, because it has brought the necessary know-how for the organization of a CTF-type competition, both from a technical and competitive point of view. The suggestions of Safetech experts help us to adjust the curricular content, and the cybersecurity issues proposed by Safetech’s technical team were used as teaching materials for the practical training of students in the field of Computers and Information Technology” – the coordinator of the event, Professor Alin Dan Potorac (Ph.D. eng. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), after last year’s edition of CTF-USV (https://ctf.usv.ro).
At the 2025 edition, the first three places were occupied by the following teams:
- „hidden” – University of Bucharest
- „UVTCTF” – West University of Timisoara
- „HELLOW” – Technical University of Moldova.
Discover the final ranking by accessing https://ctf.usv.ro/documents/2025/final_ranking_2025.pdf .
Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions are cybersecurity competitions in which participants test their technical skills by solving challenges in areas such as cryptography, malware analysis, vulnerability exploitation, forensics, or web security. Organized individually or in teams, CTFs simulate real attack and defense scenarios, offering a practical and dynamic way of learning. The goal is to identify and “capture” hidden tokens — “flags” — by solving the problems made available. These competitions are increasingly popular among students, IT professionals, and companies because they develop critical thinking, technical creativity, and the ability to work under pressure in real-world cybersecurity situations.
The “Capture the Flag” competition, organized by the “Stefan cel Mare” University with the support of Safetech Innovations and Assist Software, offers students the opportunity to test their creativity, logic and technical cybersecurity skills, turning the challenges of the competition into a real training for their future careers in the field.
We thank all the participants and organizers and we look forward to meeting them at CTF-USV 2026!