On October 25, 2023 the awarding ceremony of the participants of the cyber competition "Kharkiv Regional CTF", which took place on October 21.

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These competitions were organized with the support of the USAID "Cybersecurity of Ukraine's Critical Infrastructure" project in partnership with Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics (NURE) based on the V.V. Popovskyy Department of Infocommunication Engineering.

The competition was joined by 11 teams from 7 universities from the eastern region of Ukraine. During 12 hours, 48 participants gained practical experience in cyber security, mastered real-life cyber attack scenarios and improved their competencies and teamwork skills in categories such as:

• Web security;
• Applied cryptography;
• Steganography;
• Digital forensics;
• Open source intelligence (OSINT);
• Mixed (MISC, tasks combine features of several categories);
• Additional "Joker" category, which allows teams to receive additional points for completing short quest tasks.

As a result of persistent struggle the 1st place was taken by the team "Souberships" from Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs, the 2nd place was won by the team "3xplo1t" from the National Academy of Security Service of Ukraine, the 3rd place was taken by the team "$up3rm1nd5", which was represented by the 4th year students of the V.V. Popovskyy Department of Infocommunication Engineering of NURE.

Other teams were distributed as follows: the 4th place was taken by the team "SNOVACTF" from the Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics (IKI named after V.V. Popovsky). 8th place was taken by the team "KHPI_1121a" from the National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute", 9th place was taken by "confused_terminal" from the National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute", 10th place was taken by the team "Bedolagi" from Mariupol State University and 11th place was taken by "Cyberbufet" from theNational Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute".

During the official awarding ceremony, Igor Ruban, Acting Rector of NURE, made congratulatory speeches, congratulating the competition participants and wishing them success in the future and identifying the advantages of this kind of competition. Next was the speech of the event organizer "Kharkiv Regional CTF" Yevdokymenko M.O., who presented the results obtained and discussed the competition's critical points.

Representatives of The National Academy of Security Service of Ukraine, National University «Zaporizhzhia polytechnic» and National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute" also expressed their gratitude.

From NURE and the V.V. Popovskyy Department of Infocommunication Engineering, we would like to express our gratitude to all the participants who joined the competition.