HackDay 2025

HackDay 2025: Qualifying for the Finals in Paris!

We are proud to announce that our team has once again participated in the HackDay CTF competition! This year’s edition saw over 150 teams from around the globe competing to showcase their cybersecurity expertise.

Our team expanded a bit since last time, with new members joining us. As a result, we had the opportunity to field two teams in this year’s competition.

After 48 hours of solving challenging problems, one of our teams placed 6th(1337-W3st-CTF3rs), while the other secured 11th place(UVT-CTF), qualifying for the finals in Paris.

This marks a significant improvement compared to last year, when we qualified on the 24th place, showing our team’s growth and dedication as we continue to strive for excellence on the international stage.

Here’s to pushing the boundaries of cybersecurity and aiming even higher in the future!

Finals Recap — Paris Edition 🇫🇷

We made it to Paris!

After intense preparation and collaboration, both of our teams proudly represented our university in the HackDay 2025 finals. The competition was fierce and the challenges more difficult than last year, but we rose to the occasion.

• UVT-CTF finished in 11th place, the same as last year — a solid, consistent performance among some of the world’s top teams.
• 1337-W3st-CTF3rs secured 15th place, closing out a memorable experience for our newly formed team.

We found the challenges to be noticeably tougher this time around — both technically and creatively — but we are incredibly proud of our performance.

We want to extend our sincere appreciation to the organizers for a well-run event, from the logistics of the venue to the design of the challenges. While some puzzles leaned a bit into the “guessy” side, the overall quality was high and the ideas were original and fun.

A few highlights that stood out to us:

• A social engineering challenge where we had to impersonate an important figure and his bodyguards to infiltrate Edgar’s cult and extract hidden information.
• A hardware hacking task that involved crafting an antenna from a piece of copper wire — an awesome hands-on moment.
• A creative segment focused on GeoGuessr-style location deduction, which combined OSINT with lateral thinking.

We learned a lot, laughed a lot, and grew as a team.

Thanks again to the HackDay team — we’ll be back stronger next year!