ETH Capture the Flag Team "flagbot" qualifies for DEFCON finals
The ETH CTF (Capture the Flag) team “flagbot”, led by computer science student and VIS committee chairman Leonardo Galli, has qualified for the CTF finals in Las Vegas in August at DEFCON, the world’s largest hacker convention.
Congratulations! The ETH CTF team “flagbot” gets to join the finals at DEFCON as part of the team named organizers, a joint effort of ETH Zurich and EPFL, led by ETH students. The sponsor of the flagbot team Professor Kenny Paterson is very pleased: “It’s great to see the combined 'organizers' team get to the DEFCON CTF finals – this in itself is a huge achievement, like getting to an Olympic final.”
DEFCON is the oldest and largest security conference in the world. The term DEFCON comes from the movie WarGames, referencing the U.S. Armed Forces defense readiness condition (DEFCON). The CTF at the DEFCON could be described as the world championship of CTFs, as only 16 teams worldwide make it to the finals.
A CTF is a cyber-security competition, where numerous teams compete to solve challenges of various categories, such as binary exploitation, reverse engineering, cryptography and steganography. Often, these challenges are inspired by real world attacks or potential security attacks with a high likelihood. At the DEFCON CTFs, the global top hackers challenge each other in attack/defence matches, where all teams can attack each other’s servers. At DEFCON, the rules are similar to the real world: every kind of hacker’s trick is allowed.
Staying calm while time is running out
Leonardo Galli is a Bachelor student of computer science at ETH Zurich, VIS (Association of Computer Science Students) committee chairman and has been president of the flagbot team for two years. „I like introducing new people to CTF and teaching them new things. And: CTFs are a lot of fun,“ Leonardo explains. The passionate hacker enjoys tackling highly complex problems. Further, participating in CTFs has taught him some valuable life lessons, such as staying calm and focused when under pressure and the importance of team work. According to Paterson, the team’s two main strengths are their broad set of technical skills and that they don’t lose sight of having fun while competing. We wish the team "organizers" all the best for the finals at the DEFCON 2021, August 5-8 in Las Vegas. Or, as Paterson says: “I wish the team good luck for the final competition in Las Vegas. Go get some flags!”
