Virginia Cyber Cup Competition

In the Virginia Cyber Cup Capture the Flag, competing teams tackle problems in scenarios designed to model real-world computer security challenges across a range of categories that includes cryptography, network traffic analysis, reverse engineering, steganography, and more.
An understanding of historical and modern security vulnerabilities is helpful to gain the most of this experience. With challenges ranging from introductory to advanced, this competition is designed to both test skills and teach concepts.

The Virginia Cyber Cup Capture-the-Flag (CTF) competition is a Jeopardy-style CTF in which teams solve individual challenges of various point values across different categories to score points. The team with the highest point total at the end of the competition will be the winner. If two teams finish with equal point values, the team that first reaches the highest point value will be the winner.

The competition will use a web-based CTF engine hosted by the Virginia Cyber Range. Each team will receive log-in credentials before the competition begins; members of each team will share the team's login credentials so that any points they score are credited to the team. Team members should bring their own laptop computers for the competition and may use any open-source or properly licensed software that they bring with them for the contest.

Teams will have full internet access for the duration of the competition and they may use internet searches to help solve challenges. Teams may not ask for external assistance or otherwise contact individuals that are not on their Virginia Cyber Cup team for help on any challenge. Teams will also refrain from attacking the CTF infrastructure, either by attempting to gain unauthorized access or by interfering with other teams' access to the CTF site or to the competition network. Violation of these rules will result in immediate disqualification from the competition.

This competition is developed and hosted by the Virginia Cyber Range.

Winners for the 2020 competitions were: 3rd place - Radford University, 2nd Place - University of Virginia, and 1st Place - George Mason University. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, no event was held in 2021.