CTFZone has determined finalists who will compete for the main prize in Moscow.

The CTFZone tournament, which will take place at OFFZONE 2020, an international conference on practical cybersecurity, became an official qualifying event of DEF CON CTF. This puts CTFZone among the best Capture-the-Flag tournaments in the world along with similar events in Japan, Taiwan, China, and the USA. The team that wins the finals in Moscow will have an opportunity to compete in one of the oldest hacking tournaments.

CTFZone’s online qualifiers were conducted on November 30, with teams competing in Jeopardy format. 1,004 teams from 85 countries registered for the event. 492 participants got welcome flags. 10 teams from 6 countries qualified for offline finals: LC↯BC (Russia), mhackeroni (Italy), A*0*E (China), perfect blue (USA), Bushwackers (Russia), 地松鼠.PAS (Russia), Dragon Sector (Poland), Tea Deliverers (China), p4 (Poland), and TGS (Japan). Now they will meet in Moscow on April 16–17, 2020, during OFFZONE.

“This year saw almost all of the best teams from the CTFtime international rating participate in CTFZone’s qualifiers,” says Nikita Vdovushkin, head of CTFZone organizing committee. “The competition was fierce because everyone was out to win and fought till the very end. So even though the top 5 was decided in the first half of the competition, the rest of the top 10 was shifting during the whole qualifiers stage, giving even veteran players a reason to be a little nervous. We sincerely thank all participants and can’t wait for CTFZone finals. It’s a pity that only 10 teams get to compete in the end, but rules are rules.”

The offline stage will be conducted in Attack/Defense format. The three best teams will be rewarded with cash prizes—$10,000, $5,000, and $3,000, respectively. And the winners will also get an invitation to DEF CON CTF in Las Vegas.

CTFZone is a tournament organized by the Russian cybersecurity community. CTF (Capture-the-Flag) is a competition where participants need to solve a number of practical tasks, for example, find a web vulnerability and acquire a unique text string that is called a flag. Competitions of different scope and difficulty take place around the world on a regular basis. The most famous of them is DEF CON CTF that has been conducted annually since 1996 at DEF CON—one of the largest international cybersecurity conferences. In 2020, the event will take place on August 6–9. Its winners traditionally receive Black Badges as prizes. It is the most prestigious award that exists at the conference, and its bearers have a lifetime free access to DEF CON events.