TAR UC CTF Season 1

As VERDESEC continued to grow, we reached an important milestone by organizing our first fully online Capture-The-Flag (CTF) competition. This was our first full-scale CTF, marking a major step forward in our journey from building a local cybersecurity community to hosting larger events for a broader audience.

The event was co-organized together with TAR UMT Computer Science Society (CSS), combining our shared goal of creating more opportunities for students to engage with practical cybersecurity challenges. By working together, we were able to bring the competition to participants from multiple universities and create an event that was both accessible and engaging for a wide range of players.

To officially kick off the competition, we invited Dr. Wong Thein Lai to deliver the opening session. Their presence added significance to the event and helped set the tone for a meaningful and exciting competition.

A total of 180 players joined the CTF, with participants coming from different universities. Seeing such a strong turnout for our first large-scale online event was both exciting and rewarding. One of the most distinctive parts of this CTF was its unique hide-and-seek format. Instead of solving challenges in a more conventional style, players were required to search for flags hidden within a given website.

This created a different kind of experience, one that encouraged exploration, observation, and careful analysis. The format gave the competition its own identity and made it especially memorable for participants.

Organizing this event was a major milestone for VERDESC. It demonstrated that we were ready to host larger-scale competitions and bring together students from different backgrounds through cybersecurity. More importantly, it reinforced our mission of making cybersecurity learning interactive, practical, and community-driven.

This first full-scale online CTF was not just another event on our calendar. It was a defining moment that showed how far VERDESEC had come, and it laid the foundation for even bigger initiatives in the future.