Over 70 countries proved their programming skills at HackTM_CTF
On February 1–3, 1540 teams of hackers from all over the world competed to secure their place in the final HackTM_CTF competition, which will take place at HackTM event, between May 22–24, at Sala Polivalentă Dumbravita, near Timisoara.
The Capture The Flag (CTF) competition offered Romanian hackers the opportunity to test their programming skills alongside countries like the USA, China, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Brazil, Taiwan, and even Mongolia.
The ethical hacking competitions, more specifically those of the CTF type, gained increasing traction in the past years among programming enthusiasts of all ages. The attractiveness of CTFs lies in the ultra-competitive environment and the challenges in various fields that can be solved using knowledge of the web, mobile, cryptography, social engineering, scripting, testing, and many other programming skills.
During the intense 3 days of the competition, teams had to solve as many of the 33 online challenges related to hacking, like progressive web apps, web, forensics and crypto.
After hours of hacking, the team with the most points (10,195) and most challenges solved (29/33) was a team from Israel. A team from the USA came in second place, at a distance of about 500 points. Third place was claimed by a team from Sweden. As for Romania, the top team ranked 11th with 6370 points. They have a high chance of being accepted in the final that will be played on location at HackTM 2020.
To reserve their spots in the final held between May 22–24 near Timisoara, the top 20 teams must send write-ups (transcripts) that demonstrate how they solved the problems during the competition.
Organized by Banat IT and WreckTheLine, HackTM_CTF managed to successfully serve a niche of under-represented competitions in Romania. In addition to their ambition to build a top competition that will attract programming enthusiasts from around the world, HackTM_CTF wants to give the local community the opportunity to connect with the international programming environment. This is why the finalist teams will join in the last round in Timisoara, along with the participants of HackTM, the largest hackathon in Southeast Europe.
About WreckTheLine
WreckTheLine (WTL) is a group of young programming enthusiasts from Romania and South Korea.
The group was born with the purpose of participating in CTF type competitions and to facilitate the popularization of the genre. In 2019, WreckTheLine ranked 26th in the world, ranking 1st at 6 CTFs and reaching the top 10 in 15 in other CTFs. They also took 1st place in the National ranking of Romanian teams.
All the Romanian members of the WTL team were also part of the National Team of Romania, obtaining the first place at the European Cyber Security Championship 2019 and the second place at the same championship in 2017 and 2016. At present, WreckTheLine has 14 members.
