Cybersecurity Competitions

AMERICA’S TOP YOUNG SCIENTIST
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Oversee and Govern
Skills Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

A video competition in which students in grades 5-8 in the United States are asked to create a 1–2-minute video describing a unique solution to an everyday problem. Ten finalists are chosen to compete in the National Finals.

ÅNGSTROMCTF
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and Network Administration, Programming, Reverse Engineering

A capture-the-flag (CTF) competition hosted and organized entirely by students at Montgomery Blair High School! CTF cybersecurity competitions have become an increasingly popular way for students to learn more about cybersecurity and develop and refine their hacking skills. These competitions are designed to educate and inspire high school students through interactive hacking challenges.

APPS 4 DIGITAL PEACE
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Analyze, Policy, Legal, Strategize

Competition to stimulate new thinking from innovating young minds across the world. The goal of the competition is to develop original technology-based solutions, such as mobile applications, to both help limit the use of the internet as a domain of conflict, and to increase the stability of our online environment. Apps 4 Digital Peace is meant to complement the work of the United Nations in promoting an open, secure, stable, accessible and peaceful cyber environment through addressing existing and potential cyber threats, through

• Ensuring respect for international law in cyberspace,
• Ensuring respect for human rights in cyberspace,
• Adherence to voluntary norms, rules and principles,
• Fostering confidence building, and
• cybersecurity capacity building.

COLLEGIATE SOCIAL ENGINEERING CAPTURE-THE-FLAG (SECTF)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Analyze, Investigate, & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Analyzes Data and Information, Written and Communication Skills, reconnaissance, human-socio-psychological aspects 

The Collegiate Social Engineering Capture-the-Flag (SECTF) is a competition and training event that allows students to compete in a purely social engineering intercollegiate competition and offers free training to students and educators. The Collegiate SECTF is grounded in the social sciences and offers a timely and unique platform for students to learn about social engineering in a hands-on, engaging, and ethical manner.

CONRAD CHALLENGE
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

The Conrad Challenge is an annual, multi-phase innovation and entrepreneurship competition that encourages young adults to participate in designing the future. Each year, teams of 2-5 students, ages 13-18, from around the world create products and/or services to address some of the most pressing global and local challenges. They become entrepreneurial problem-solvers, addressing challenging social, scientific and societal issues through utilizing their creativity and critical- thinking skills. Participants work together to identify challenges and develop solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems in any of the following categories: Aerospace & Aviation, Cyber-Technology & Security, Energy & Environment, Health & Nutrition, Transforming Education Through Technology, Smoke-Free World: Eliminating & Reducing Teen Vaping, and Smoke-Free World: Re-purposed Farmlands & Tobacco Crops. Teams may submit in multiple categories if desired.

CSAW CAPTURE THE FLAG (CTF)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

CSAW is the most comprehensive student-run cybersecurity event in the world, featuring 7 cyber competitions, workshops, and industry events. Final events are hosted by 5 global academic centers.

CYBER FORCE COMPETITION
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

The Department of Energy CyberForce Competition is a cyber defense competition focusing on energy cyber infrastructure. Scenarios have an energy focus, on subjects like power distributors and water and power delivery systems. There are five teams in the CyberForce Competition: the Blue Team, which ensures proper IT support is administered; the Red Team, which attacks the Blue Team’s infrastructure; the White Team, which consists of IT administrators and architects of the competition; the Green Team, which tests the usability and availability of the Blue Team’s systems; and the Phish Tank, which allows Blue Team members to pitch a defense strategy. Teams are scored on creativity and innovation.

CYBER 9/12 STRATEGY CHALLENGE
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Analyze, investigate, policy, legal, strategize

The Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is an annual cyber policy and strategy competition where students from across the globe compete in developing policy recommendations tackling a fictional cyber catastrophe. This one-of-a-kind cyber competition is designed to provide students from across academic disciplines with a deeper understanding of the policy and strategy challenges associated with management of tradeoffs during a cyber crisis. Part interactive learning experience and part competitive scenario exercise, it challenges students to respond to a realistic, evolving scenario of international cyber crisis, analyze the threat it poses to national, international, and private-sector interests, and provide recommendations on the best course of action to mitigate the crisis.

CYBERPATRIOT
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration

CyberPatriot is a program established for the K-12 education of students in cybersecurity by the Air Force Association. There are three branches of the program, including the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, AFA CyberCamps, and Elementary School Cyber Education Initiative. The Cyber Defense Competition starts at the state and then regional level. Top competitors are then given an all-expense paid trip to the national finals. At nationals, participants compete for national recognition and scholarship money.

CYBERQUESTS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration, vulnerability analysis, forensic analysis, packet capture analysis

Cyber Quests are a series of cybersecurity online challenges that can cover topics including vulnerability analysis, forensic analysis, and packet capture analysis. Each quest features an artifact for analysis, along with a series of quiz questions. Some quests focus on a potentially vulnerable sample web server as the artifact, challenging participants to identify its flaws using vulnerability analysis skills. Other quests are focused around forensic analysis, packet capture analysis, and more. The quests have varying levels of difficulty and complexity, with some quests geared toward beginners, while others include more intermediate and ultimately advanced material.

DEF CON CONTESTS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: All seven NICE categories
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

Probably the largest cybersecurity conference, DEF CON presents a wide range of contents that often change from year to year. Common competitions include hacking, lockpicking, scavenger hunts, and the highly prestigious capture the flag contest. The conference takes place in Las Vegas annually.

ECYBERMISSION
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge topic. System and network administration, programming, reverse engineering

eCYBERMISSION is a web-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) competition for students in grades six through nine. Students are challenged to explore how STEM works in their world while working as a team to solve problems in their community. Teams compete virtually in state and regional competitions and in- person through the National Judging & Educational Event (NJ&EE). Student prizes are awarded at the state, regional, and national levels by grade level. Three mission areas National Security & Safety, Robotics, and Technology connect directly with cybersecurity.

EXPLORAVISION
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

Participants engage in real-world problem solving, rooted in STEM. The challenge is to look 20 years into the future and communicate a new future technology.

HIGH SCHOOL CAPTURE THE FLAG (HSCTF)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration, programming, reverse engineering

HSCTF ("High School Capture the Flag") is an international online hacking competition designed to educate high schoolers in computer science. Teams of up to five students will be challenges to crack codes, reverse engineer, design algorithms, and master the Internet.

HONEYNET PROJECT CHALLENGES
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

Challenges give students the opportunity to analyze attacks and share their findings. Individuals and organizations learn about threats, and how to learn and analyze them. Even better, individuals can see the write-ups from other individuals, learning new tools and technique for analyzing attacks. A sample solution is posted at the end of each challenge. Submissions received are judged by our members and the top three submissions are recognized and awarded with small prizes.

JUNIOR SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES SYMPOSIA (JSHS)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Skills vary by individual challenge

The Junior Science and Humanities Symposia (JSHS) Program is a tri-service – U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force – sponsored STEM competition which promotes original research and experimentation in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at the high school level and publicly recognizes students for outstanding achievement. By connecting talented students, their teachers, and research professionals at affiliated symposia and by rewarding research excellence, JSHS aims to widen the pool of trained talent prepared to conduct research and development vital to our nation. Several categories connect with cybersecurity.

KRYPTOS CHALLENGE
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, cryptography, networking

κρυπτοσ or kryptos, is a contest open to undergraduate and high school students. The theme of the contest is centered around the breaking, or cryptanalysis, of ciphers (secret writing). Each challenge presents contestants with a brief scenario together with some ciphertext (encoded message). The goal is to discover the original English plaintext message! Clues to help break the cipher may be contained in the actual ciphertext or in the details of the accompanying scenario. While it is not the intent of this contest to test overly technical aspects of cryptanalysis or advanced mathematical algorithms, some familiarity with basic code making and codebreaking is certainly helpful.

MITRE CYBER ACADEMY
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Analyze & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: Steganography, software exploitation, computer forensics, cryptography, networking

MITRE presents an annual STEM Capture the Flag challenge that is open to both current students and professionals. While current professionals may compete in the competition for education and training purposes, only eligible high school and college teams are able to obtain winning prizes, scholarships, and internships.

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE CYBER DEFENSE COMPETITION
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration

The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition is the finalist event for the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition system. College students compete in regional competitions to become one of the 10 finalists to make it to the national event. Student teams assume administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network. Each team begins with an identical set of software and hardware and is scored on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, respond to business requests, maintain the availability of existing services and balance security needs against business needs.

NATIONAL CYBER LEAGUE (NCL)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration

The National Cyber League (NCL) is the most inclusive, performance-based, learning- centered collegiate cybersecurity competition today! The NCL, powered by Cyber Skyline, enables students to prepare and test themselves against practical cybersecurity challenges that they will likely face in the workforce, such as identifying hackers from forensic data, pentesting and audit vulnerable websites, recovering from ransomware attacks, and much more! Open to U.S. high school and college students, the NCL is a community and virtual training ground that allow students to develop and demonstrate their technical cybersecurity skills, helping students bridge the gap from curriculum to career!

NORTH AMERICAN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS OPEN COMPETITION
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, cryptography, networking

NACLO is a contest in which high school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving these puzzles, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent cutting edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.

NSA CODEBREAKER CHALLENGE
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, cryptography, networking

The National Security Agency (NSA) Codebreaker Challenge provides students with a hands-on opportunity to develop their reverse-engineering and low-level code analysis skills while working on a realistic problem set centered around the NSA's mission.

PANOPLY
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: System and network administration

Panoply, a Network Security Competition, is a network assessment and network defense competition combined into a single event. Teams of students compete for control of common resources and the critical services on those resources. Once a team takes possession of a resource, they must secure that resource against attacks from other teams and maintain the critical services running on the resource. Teams accumulate points for controlling and operating critical services such as SMTP, DNS, HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, etc.

PITCOCTF
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration

picoCTF is a free computer security game targeted at middle and high school students, created by security experts at Carnegie Mellon University. The game consists of a series of challenges centered around a unique storyline where participants must reverse engineer, break, hack, decrypt, or do whatever it takes to solve the challenge.

PRESIDENT’S CUP CYBERSECURITY COMPETITION
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Protect and Defend, Investigate, Operate and Maintain, & Securely Provision
Skill Areas: Dependent upon track and the round. Resources provided on website.

The President’s Cup has two tracks and participants can choose to compete in one or both:  

• Individuals: enroll as an individual and compete in one or both of two tracks: offensive and defensive.  
• Teams: enroll in groups of two to five from across the government and take on tasks drawn from eight in-demand work roles.

It has three rounds between August and December. The first two will take place virtually and participants only need internet access and a web browser to compete. The finals will be held in person at the Cyberecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)’s Arlington, VA, facility as conditions allow.  

• Round 1: Open to the entire federal workforce 
• Round 2: The top 100 scores from each track and teams in round 1 

• Finals: The top 10 individuals from each track and top 5 teams from round 2 

REGENERON SCIENCE TALENT SEARCH (STS)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Dependent upon research area
Skill Areas: Dependent upon research area

The nation’s oldest and most prestigious science competition. Entrants to this competition must conduct an original research project and supplement their applications with recommendation letters and transcripts.13 alumni have won the Nobel Prize. Forty finalists are selected and receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. for in-depth judging.

SANS ACES
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain
Skill Areas: Networking, operating systems, system administration

SANS Cyber Aces Online is online content that teaches the core concepts needed to assess and protect information security systems. Content was developed by SANS, and includes an engaging, self-paced, easy to use combination of tutorial and videos. It’s available as open courseware so you can take it anytime. For each of the modules, competitors will participate in a national competition by taking an on-line multiple- choice quiz.

SANS NETWARS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Operate and Maintain
Skill Areas: Skills range by individual competitions

The SANS Institute offers a series of challenge types through their NetWars modules. These challenges are available for a wide variety of skill levels, and even feature a miniaturized physical city over which challenge participants can attempt to compete for the cyber resources. A wide range of competitions are available throughout the year in locations around the world.

SANS BOOTUP CTF
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Operate and Maintain
Skill Areas: Skills range by individual competitions

Bootup CTF is a capture-the-flag style cyber range consisting of over 125 multi-disciplinary cybersecurity challenges. It can be played solo or as a team. Bootup runs virtually online for 24-72 hours. Players can log in to participate or log out to take breaks at any time, multiple times, during the open session. Bootup CTF also features an automated hint system to help participants with supporting material and content related to the questions.

TJCTF
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration

TJCTF is a Capture the Flag (CTF) competition hosted by Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST)'s Computer Security Club. It is an online, jeopardy-style competition targeted at high schoolers interested in Computer Science and Cybersecurity. Participants may compete on a team of up to 5 people and will solve problems in categories such as Binary Exploitation, Reverse Engineering, Web Exploitation, Forensics, and Cryptography in order to gain points.

U.S.A MATHEMATICAL TALENT SEARCH (USAMTS)
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: Encryption algorithms, digital forensics, cryptography, networking

A monthly online mathematics competition where students are given one math problem to solve. Because of the level of difficulty, students (middle and high school) have the remainder of the month to work out solutions. Students' solutions are graded by mathematicians, and comments are returned to the students to develop their problem-solving skills and writing abilities. Participants are eligible for various prizes, such as books and software throughout the year. Additionally, the top scorers are invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), a process necessary for applying to the USA Mathematical Olympiad Team. The USAMTS is primarily sponsored by the National Security Agency.

U.S. CYBER CHALLENGE
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Skills range by individual competitions

Cyber Quests are a series of fun but challenging on-line competitions allowing participants to demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of information security realms. Each quest features an artifact for analysis, along with a series of quiz questions. Some quests focus on a potentially vulnerable sample web server as the artifact, challenging participants to identify its flaws using vulnerability analysis skills. Other quests are focused around forensic analysis, packet capture analysis, and more. The quests have varying levels of difficulty and complexity, with some quests geared toward beginners, while others include more intermediate and ultimately advanced material.

U.S. CYBER GAMES
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Analyze, Operate and Maintain, Protect and Defend, Collect and Operate, Investigate, & Securely Provision
Skill Areas: Cryptography, Reverse Engineering, Forensics, Web Exploitation, Reconnaissance, Networking

The US Cyber Games identify the very best in cybersecurity through the three phases:

• US Cyber Open: Applicants ages 18 to 26 from across the nation will compete in a two-week Open Capture the Flag (CTF) competition consisting of a series of virtual cybersecurity challenges, where they will be scored in multiple cybersecurity areas.

• US Cyber Combine Invitational: 60 athlete players will be invited to participate in a number of virtual learning games and programs over eight weeks. During this qualifying phase, athletes will undergo an aptitude for cyber evaluation, interview with multiple coaches, and perform in an advanced CTF qualifier round.
• US Cyber Team of drafted cybersecurity athletes: 20 top cybersecurity athletes will be selected for the US Cyber Team to represent the United States at the annual International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC).  

VIRGINIA CYBER RANGE CAREER WEEK AND NICE K12 CONFERENCE CONTESTS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Awareness of NICE Framework
Skill Areas: Samples of skills associated with the seven categories and a variety of work roles

The Virginia Cyber Range proved a weeklong Jeopardy style, Capture the Flag competition to celebrate Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week (third week in October). The web-based competition environment allows participants to demonstrate cybersecurity knowledge in a competitive game while learning more about the NICE Framework – skills needed by a variety of different work roles. A similar two-day contest runs throughout the NICE K12 Cybersecurity Education Conference each December.

GLOBAL CYBERLYMPICS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision, Protect and Defend,  & Oversee and Govern
Skill Areas: Pen testing, forensics, malware, log analysis, system exploitation, physical security

The Cyberlympics is a competition aimed at a broad scope of IT Security Professionals and though we include some CTF components, Cyberlympics goes beyond the basic CTF challenge! It enforces the idea of team-work by providing challenges that span nearly all areas of IT Security such as pen testing, forensics, malware, log analysis, system exploitation, physical security and those are just to name a few! Cyberlympics is not solely focused on offense or defense but rather, it’s an all-encompassing approach allowing teams to compete with whatever cybersecurity strengths they bring to the competition!

ONLINE OLYMPIAD IN LINGUISTICS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, cryptography, networking

The Online Olympiad in Linguistics was conceived as an annual competition that would allow secondary school students from all over the world to get closer to understanding the scientific beauty of language. It can also serve as practice before the (offline) International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), which takes place every summer and brings together students from many countries. Unlike the IOL, however, the Online Olympiad is well suited for problems that involve real-time interaction and feature multimedia materials.

PACKETWARS
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
Skill Areas: physical security, analysis, digital forensics, cryptography, networking, reverse engineering

PACKETWARS is a real-time cyber operations simulation, designed to simulate real-world engagements and campaigns. PACKETWARS events happen at hacker events throughout the country. PACKETWARS takes place in games known as “battles,” where teams and individuals race to achieve objectives. Battles have time limits and other defined constraints, but the constraints are not always known to players.

PACTF
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration

PACTF includes two rounds, each one week-long. During each round, you can pick any two-day span to grab as many flags as you can! Choose wisely: Once your two days run out, you won’t be able to score more points in that round. Don’t worry about being too slow, though! Even if your two-day timer is over, you can still test your skills against problems in previous rounds. There are scoreboards for each individual round, and there is an overall all-time scoreboard.

REDPWN CTF
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: System and network administration, reverse engineering, cryptography

redpwnCTF is a cybersecurity competition hosted by the redpwn CTF team. It’s online, jeopardy-style, and includes a wide variety of computer science and cybersecurity challenges. Compete in challenge categories such as binary exploitation, reverse engineering, cryptography, and web to earn points.

Technology Student Association’s Cybersecurity Competition
NICE Framework Category Alignment: Securely Provision, Operate and Maintain, & Protect and Defend
Skill Areas: Programming, debugging, testing and validation, writing and oral communication

Participants respond to a cybersecurity challenge by identifying a breach in computer security via "Capture the Flag" games. Participants solve onsite challenges in a specified, limited amount of time.