Cyber Challenge

The Cyber Challenge will be within traditional capture the flag (CTF) fashion. It is composed of a series of jeopardy-style questions, testing participants in a variety of CS proficiencies.

Eligibility

The Student Cyber Challenge invites the IEEE Student Branches and IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu Chapters at universities throughout IEEE Region 5 to send teams composed of two or three undergraduate students to compete. The teams should submit their intent to compete form. Teams are selected from the submitted pool on a first come first served basis. Selected teams will be invited to register for the R5 conference and participate in the competition. Team substitutions are at the discretion of the competition chair. 

No more than two teams are allowed from each IEEE Student Branch or IEEE-HKN Chapter due to space limitations.

Rules and Guidelines

The contest will begin at 10:00 am on the event day and go on until 3:00 pm, with a working lunch. Following are the general rules for this year’s cyber challenge

  • Do not manipulate or hack the scoreboard or other competition infrastructure.
  • Do not breach or manipulate another participant’s game.
  • Do not share challenge solutions with other participants not on your team.

Team and Student Registration

Each team MUST complete the online Intent to Compete form to declare their intention to participate. This is NOT the same as registering for the IEEE Region 5 conference. In addition to this each team must also register for the conference by February 14, 2025 to ensure their place to compete. The fee for registration is $150 for IEEE members and $250 otherwise.

Space is limited and the competition registration will close when the available space for twenty (20) teams is filled, but no later than 12:00 am CDT on March 15, 2025. As of November 7, 2024, there is available space for 14 teams in the competition.

Intent to Compete

Awards

Winners will be awarded the following prize money

  • 1st Place – $800
  • 2nd Place – $500
  • 3rd Place – $200

Awards will be disbursed to the teams’ IEEE student branches or IEEE-HKN chapters.

Contact

We use Discord as our primary means of communicating updates about individual competitions. Click on the button below to join the R5 Discord Server. Inside the server you can find channels for all the competitions, including the Cyber challenge (#cyber-general). The competition chairs and volunteers are members of the channel, and will respond to any questions you might have.

We strongly recommend the participants to be part of the Discord server, as all the updates regarding individual competitions will be communicated via their corresponding channels (including during the day of the event).