Another successful HackMex CTF event took place in October 2021. HackMex CTF gained so much traction in the last two years that participants from all over the world asked to participate. So this year we had an amazing twist. It was the first year that the private sector was allowed to compete in the event so there were three different competition categories with separate scoreboards and activity streams: students, private sector and government agencies. This year’s challenges incorporated real life attack and defense scenarios in a simulated Smart City environment as well as different jeopardy challenges such as forensics, reverse engineering, binary analysis, incident investigation and more. As the organisers stated, apart from the lessons learned throughout this event, this year gave the opportunity for the academia, government and private sector to cooperate, strengthen their social ties and productivity and prove that cybersecurity works best when sharing good practices and embrace teamwork.

A non-profit CTF competition was developed for this year's national EESTech Challenge for both EETech LC Athens and LC Thessaloniki. The participants competed in teams, claiming the qualification to the final round of Europe, which took place in Belgrade. The participants battled in a mixed style CTF with challenges of varying difficulty which included topics such forensics, reverse engineering, network and operating systems exploitation, incident investigation and many more.

For the second consecutive year we developed the HackMex CTF for the Instituto Politécnico Nacional of Mexico. This year’s challenges included digital forensics, reverse engineering, binary analysis, vulnerability identification, incident investigation and more. The participants were divided into 2 categories, the Academics and the .GOB & .ORG. Each of the categories had separate leaderboards and activity streams. The participants included university students from all around Mexico as well as government, military and intelligence services.

An online CTF competition was developed for the Instituto Politécnico Nacional of Mexico. The tournament was held by The National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). The scope of HackMex 2019 was to measure the technological capacity of Mexico, in an academic environment with international projection. The competition attracted not only students from different universities, but also cyber security professionals, making it the largest CTF competition in the country. Due to high demand, the competition was completed in two stages, the qualification round and finals. The event gained national media attention.

For the third year in a row, we delivered an echoCTF based competition for the Cyber Sabers Hackathon. The competition took place during the two days of the MENA ISC 2019 Security Conference held in Riyadh, KSA. This year we included even more challenges and flags that represented the latest security trends of 2019. We also added more defensive challenges to test how the participants act in real life situations.

A demonstration platform, created for one of our clients for the needs of the IDEX 2019, which perfectly demonstrates the diversity of our platform. This military themed platform is comprised of echoCTF targets and a diorama specifically tailored to illustrate the effects of security lapses on modern military facilities. A presenter attacks and takes control of systems (echoCTF targets) of the military facility which control various infrastructure elements of the diorama through real-life services. The attacks result in opening the automated hangar doors, take control of a UAV, bypass authorization checks on gates and more.

For the second year in a row, Echothrust Solutions was tasked to deliver an echoCTF based competition for the Cyber Sabers Hackathon. The competition took place during the two days of the MENA ISC 2018 and included 36 teams and 153 participants. This year, we included even more custom made models of signature buildings of Riyadh, Jeddah, Kuwait and Dubai. Besides the usual offensive challenges, programming and defensive challenges were also developed. The top scoring teams were awarded with prizes of 50,000 to 20,000 SAR and every participant was awarded with a certificate of participation.

European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA EU Agency) "Hack the Airport" concept includes airport infrastructure CTF scenarios which are visualized through a scaled model of an airport. ENISA Hack the airport is utilized as part of the 5th pan European cyber crisis exercise, Cyber Europe 2018 (CE2018). The scenarios include obtaining control of a jet bridge, the radar, a moving walkway, the departures board and more.

As part of the MENA ISC 2017, a Hackathon competition took place and students of more than 10 Universities across KSA (Saudi Arabia) participated. This time, amongst other elements usually included on echoCiTy-F, custom made models of signature buildings of the city of Riyadh were constructed. Along with other challenges on information systems and infrastructure elements, aspects of the custom made buildings could also be controlled like the elevator and lights of the Kingdom Tower and lights of the Burj Rafal tower. The top four point scoring teams were awarded with prizes of 50,000 to 20,000 SAR and certificates of participation.

Echothrust Solutions created from scratch, a smart city model, the echoCiTy-F, which represents vital infrastructure components of a smart city - including ICS and SCADA systems for transportation, energy, communications and construction. The gameplay was visible to the players and public through computer generated visualisations. Amongst other challenges, hackers tried to obtain control of a model train, its rail tracks and the train passage bars, the lights and ventilation of a train tunnel, the airport's communication tower, a power plant and a nuclear plant, wind turbines and more. echoCTF's gameplay was designed to assess students knowledge and skills and educate them on cyber security and ethical hacking. The team with the highest points at the end won the competition, taking home the prize of AED 20,000 and certificates of participation.