Between 23 and 26 March, the Faculty of Computer Science of Voronezh State University held the 5th open competition in programming and computer security VrnCTF'23. More than 150 schoolchildren, 200 students, and cadets from Voronezh and more than 10 cities of Russia took part in the competition. The Voronezh participants competed in person.
Traditionally for VrnCTF, individual competitions in sports programming are held, along with the overall competition being about computer security.
Denis Volkov, Head of the Department of Digital Development of the Voronezh Region, Oleg Kozaderov, Vice-Rector for Research, Innovations, and Digitising, Vladimir Zheleznyak, Head of the Information Security Department of the Government of the Voronezh Region, CTF movement coordinator in Russia, Sergeн Budnikov, research fellow of the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control of Russia, Professor at the Department of Automated Control Systems and Information Security of Voronezh Air Force Academy, Anton Balashov, Executive Director of the Cyber Defense Center of Sberbank, Alexander Dvoryansky, Director of the Department of Information Security and Special Solutions of Sitronics Group and other representatives of partner organizations of the competition.
In programming competitions, for the solution of each task, an algorithm should be created and written as a programme in any programming language. The correctness of the solutions is checked automatically using a pre-compiled set of tests.
The computer security competitions can include tasks of different categories: Forensic (computer forensics), OSINT (search for information on the Internet, intelligence), Crypto (cryptography), Web (search and use of web vulnerabilities), Stegano (steganography), Reverse (research into programs without source code, reverse engineering), Misc (miscellaneous from all areas of computer security). The solution to such tasks is a "flag", a specially formed sequence of characters "hidden" in various "containers".
More than 100 students and cadets took part in offline programming competitions. The winners were cadets of the Russian Air Force Military Educational and Scientific Centre “Air Force Academy”, students of the Faculty of Computer Science of VSU, and a student from Moscow State University.
Around 100 schoolchildren participated in the competition, among which were the students of Kvantorium children's technopark of Lipetsk, who showed themselves to be the best at programming. Also, the winners were representatives of school No. 10 (Rossosh), Lyceum No. 1, Lyceum education centre No. 2, school No. 95.
The schoolchildren also showed great interest in computer security competitions, 17 teams took part in the offline competition. Three teams from school No. 10 (Rossosh), school No. 83, Lyceum No. 1, school No. 98, Lyceum No. 4, Gymnasium No. 6, school No. 10 (Liski), Lyceum No. 65 were winners.
26 teams took part in offline student computer security competitions and 15 teams participated online. Among full-time participants, all three teams of winners were students of the Faculty of Computer Science of Voronezh State University. The team of cadets from the Russian Air Force Military Educational and Scientific Centre “Air Force Academy” and the Voronezh Institute of the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation, were behind the winners by symbolic points, and they were awarded diplomas. Online participants competed in a separate classification, among them the teams from the A.F. Mozhaisky Military Space Academy (1st place), Russian Federation Security Guard Service Federal Academy (2nd place), and the Krasnodar Higher Military School (3rd place) were the best. The full list of winners is published on the competition website.
After the competition, representatives of Sberbank, Sitronics Group, Echelon Tekhnologii, InfoTeKS, Severstal-infocom, Neoflex, DSR, Angels IT, and other companies made presentations for the participants.
“VrnCTF competitions have been held by the Faculty of Computer Science for the fifth year in a row, and now we can say with confidence that having taken place, they have become widely known among students and schoolchildren, not only in Voronezh and the region, but also in other regions of Russia. For the first time, the competitions were held over four days.
The level of difficulty of tasks is constantly increasing. We see how the eyes of schoolchildren and students light up after such competitions, and we try to support them in every possible way, for example, we conduct additional classes to prepare for such competitions. All this together contributes to a significant increase in the professional level of the students. Therefore, I want to express my deep gratitude to all our partners, the number of which increases every year, who helped us in holding the VrnCTF, as well as the organizing committee and the jury of the competition. Our students made a great contribution to the organization and holding of the competition. They created the tasks, provided technical support, and were on duty in the classrooms”, commented Alexander Krylovetsky, Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science of VSU.
