This year, I once again participated in the online qualifiers of the Cyber Security Challenge Belgium 2024, which took place from March 8th to 9th. My team, "De Bruine Snorren," who also competed together the previous two years, signed up for this year's event. Unfortunately, the timing of the challenge was not ideal for us. I couldn't contribute much on Friday, and two of my teammates were unavailable for the entire challenge.

Small Recap

The Cyber Security Challenge is an event where students from various schools compete to earn the most points by finding flags in different cybersecurity-related puzzles and challenges. The competition consists of several stages, with the online qualifiers running for two days, from Friday at 10:00 to Saturday at 18:00. The top 38 teams from the qualifiers are invited to Brussels for the live finals.

Challenges and Participation

Due to scheduling conflicts, I could only work on the challenge Friday evening, and only one other teammate was available to help. Together, we managed to solve most of the challenges and find many of the flags. This year's challenges were new and interesting, offering more diversity than last year. There was one particular flag that I knew I could find and tried everything possible, but I was unable to reconstruct it. Even after the write-ups were released, which detailed the same method I used, I still couldn't find it. This was quite frustrating and left me wondering if the challenge was broken.

Conclusion

Despite the setbacks, participating in the Cyber Security Challenge Belgium 2024 was a lot of fun. We ended up placing 137th, which was not enough to advance to the finals. However, I learned a lot and am eager to take part in more Capture the Flag (CTF) events in the future.