On October 19, 2024, the final round of the “ASEAN 2024 Students with Information Security” competition took place in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with the participation of 83 teams, including 56 teams from Vietnam and 27 teams from 9 other ASEAN countries. Four teams from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology (PTIT) won 02 Third Prizes and 02 Consolation Prizes.

Specifically, the PTIT.Celebi and PTIT.MuSt4ngPanDa teams from the Hanoi campus won 02 Third Prizes in Category A: Attack and Defense and Category B: Capture the Flag (CTF), respectively. The PTITHCM_L4st04nce and PTITHCM_Invisible teams from the Ho Chi Minh City campus won 02 Consolation Prizes in Category A and Category B of the competition.Competition details and resultsBoth categories had a competition time from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM on October 19, but with different formats:

Category A: Direct attack-defense format, featuring 20 teams that had the highest results in the preliminary round from 20 universities. Teams must defend their own systems while attacking and scoring points by exploiting vulnerabilities in other teams’ systems. The organizers awarded 15 prizes: 1 First Prize, 2 Second Prizes, 3 Third Prizes, and 09 Consolation Prizes.

Category B: Jeopardy format, featuring 63 teams. Teams must solve challenges related to information security (IS) to find hidden “flags” in systems. The challenges were divided into five groups: Reverse Engineering, Software Exploitation, Web Application Exploitation, Cryptography, and Others (e.g., digital forensics, programming, steganography). The organizers awarded 24 prizes: 1 First Prize, 3 Second Prizes, 5 Third Prizes, and 15 Consolation Prizes.

Remarks at the award ceremony

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hung, Chairman of the Vietnam Information Security Association and former Deputy Minister of Information and Communications, said during the award ceremony that the competition is a concrete activity to develop human resources in IS for Vietnam. He emphasized, “The competition is increasingly improving in quality and is comparable to other IS competitions in the region. Teams that have won high prizes in this competition have been sent to regional IS competitions and have achieved top results.”

The Ministry of Education and Training will award certificates of merit to the high-achieving teams from Category A at the International Conference on “Vietnam Information Security Day 2024” scheduled for late November 2024.