CTF-USV 2025
UVT-CTF Team Wins 2nd Place at CTF-USV 2025
On 26–27 November 2025, the UVT-CTF team of the West University of Timișoara participated in the cybersecurity competition CTF-USV 2025, organized by Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava.
The contest, now at its 10th edition, was held online and brought together student teams from universities across Romania and abroad.
More details: https://ctf.usv.ro
Result
The UVT-CTF lineup — Paul Valase, Elias Bota, Ramon Mateaș, and Mark Drăgota — earned 2nd place with a total of 2800 points.
This edition featured a box-style CTF: teams were given only a single vulnerable IP, with a chain of seven services and challenges that unlocked sequentially.
We managed to fully compromise the entire environment — all seven stages — from initial footholds and lateral movement to the final privilege escalation. Our 2nd place result was determined solely by the time difference, as all teams reaching the podium completed the full challenge chain.
This marks the second consecutive year that UVT-CTF finishes on the podium at CTF-USV. In 2024, our team secured 3rd place, reflecting our continued growth and consistency across editions.
A Valuable Experience
The competition required deep technical investigation across multiple services exposed on the target host.
According to our full internal report, the engagement involved identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in chained components such as:
- misconfigured web services and template injection,
- insecure file upload mechanisms,
- JWT weakness and backend bypass,
- SQL injection paths,
- port-knocking–gated services,
- mobile application reverse engineering for secret extraction,
- and a final boot2root-style Linux privilege escalation.
The box demanded strong coordination, rapid pivoting, and continuous adaptation as each service revealed clues for the next. The experience further strengthened our teamwork, problem-solving, and resilience under pressure.
A Milestone for UVT-CTF
Our 2nd place finish at CTF-USV 2025 — together with last year’s 3rd place — represents an important milestone for our team. We remain committed to improving, learning, and representing UVT in national and international CTF events.
