A group of recent Computer Science graduates and current students won the first place at Surrey Cyber Security Cluster event!
"Under the team name 'Amateur Hour' (as it was the first Capture the Flag some had done), we managed to conquer every challenge thrown at us by BAE Digital Intelligence as part of a Surrey Cyber Security Cluster event.
We didn't use a single hint, attaining the maximum number of points available at the competition by completing all 51 challenges. At first, our goal was simply to have fun and hopefully not place last, but it quickly became apparent that we had a real knack for solving the challenges, as from the first hour of the event onwards, we held firmly onto the top of the scoreboard. Between us, we had a wide variety of skills that were put to the test: buffer overflow exploitation, packet capture analysis, Linux access manipulation, reverse engineering, cryptanalysis, and more. It’s impossible to list them all!
We managed to effectively divide the challenges between the team members in accordance with what we did best, and we all had a great 4 days. What started as a casual activity soon spiralled into obsession. Several of us managed to find time to do the CTF at work, and some of us chose to set back alternative plans and burn the midnight oil, in order to eke out extra points, all in the name of victory."
The team, consisted of current and graduate Royal Holloway students:
- Adam Plaskitt - Graduated 2022 - BSc Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) with a Year in Industry
- Aedan Lawrence - Graduated 2022 - BSc Computer Science (Information Security)
- Alexia Coburn - 3rd year - BSc Computer Science
- Bruce Lay - Graduated 2023 - BSc Computer Science (Information Security) with a Year in Industry
- Sulaimaan Bajwa - 4th year - MSci Computer Science (Software Engineering)
The trophy the team won can be found in the glass cabinet at the foyer of Bedford building.
