“Ștefan Cel Mare” University of Suceava and Safetech Innovations continue the successful partnership for the “Capture the Flag” 2024 competition
“Ștefan Cel Mare” University of Suceava in partnership with Safetech Innovations organized, between November 21-22, 2024, the ninth edition of CTF-USV, the only international student competition in Romania in the Capture the Flag format, which tests the cybersecurity knowledge of students from the computer science specializations.
The CTF-USV 2024 edition (https://ctf.usv.ro/) recorded a new participation record, with 45 teams registered from 15 higher education institutions, representing four countries: Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Cuba and Ukraine. Each team was composed of a maximum of 4 students, coordinated by a teaching staff.
Ph. D. prof. Alin Dan Potorac, the event coordinator, emphasized the importance of the CTF-USV competition for students and industry, in the context of the shortage of cybersecurity experts in Romania: “The Capture the Flag format creates a competitive climate and highlights cybersecurity knowledge. Participants are faced with challenges, often atypical, which helps them familiarize themselves with the ethical side of vulnerability identification techniques and find specific solutions or alternative ways to respond to incidents. Beyond these, future experts, now in training, have the chance to assert themselves. Many of the former participants are now working in specialized companies. Students from dozens of universities, including Ukraine, Moldova and Brazil, have taken advantage of this launch pad.”
The competition itself involved solving cybersecurity challenges that tested the following skills:
- Identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities as described in the OWASP Top 10
- Identifying the services and software versions involved in running web applications
- Identifying the services and software versions associated with the host operating system
- Exploitation of several vulnerabilities, namely configuration issues, existing within the various components developed, as part of the CTF, by the team of cybersecurity experts within Safetech.
The results were uploaded by each team on the dedicated CTF platform, where the scores were automatically calculated. The final results were confirmed by Safetech experts, based on the technical reports, describing the exploitation techniques, submitted at the end of the competition by each participating team.
In the 2024 edition, the top four ranked teams represented universities from Romania and Ukraine:
- Team “PwnTCNt” (2100 points) – Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
- “PwnOAP” (1500 points) – National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest
- “eUVTCTF” (1500 points) – West University of Timisoara
- “QWEQST” (300 points) – Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine).
Access the full list of teams participating in CTF-USV 2024 and the scores obtained at: https://ctf.usv.ro/CTF-2024_Contest_Final_Ranking.pdf .
This year too, Safetech Innovations, a traditional partner of CTF-USV since the first edition in 2016, supported the competition by providing constant technical support throughout the entire contest (24 hours) as well as the software and hardware infrastructure necessary for the 45 virtual machines used.
The competition is organized by a team of teachers from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, “Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, coordinated by Ph. D. prof. Alin Potorac, and benefits from material and logistical support from private companies. Safetech Innovations’ involvement is long-term and aims to train the next generation of cybersecurity experts, but also to increase awareness of the importance of cybersecurity.
