Posted: 28th November 2016

Having placed third in the Deloitte CTF (Capture the Flag) qualifier four weeks ago, the Ox002147 team composed by Chris Bellchambers (3^rd year Maths & Computer Science), Cecile Berillon (MSc), Emma Espinosa (3^rd year Computer Science), Alastair Janse van Rensburg and Ilias Giechaskiel  (both Cyber Security Centre for Doctoral Training) headed off to the final round at the Deloitte offices in London.

The competition featured 17 security-related challenges, and included problems in cryptography, forensics, web application exploitation, binary reverse engineering, and some physical security challenges such as lock picking and hardware hacking.

The competition was very closely fought – towards the end, Edinburgh and Oxford were tied in points, with Edinburgh in the lead. But in a dramatic turn of events, a final flag submission four minutes before the end gave Oxford first place!

[Photo left to right: Chris, Alastair, Ilias, Cecile, Emma.]