A team of Amrita students from the Amritapuri campus secured the top most spot from India in a global online Capture-the-Flag contest, that was organized as part of the Cyber Security Awareness Week in New York last August.

The team ranked ahead of other teams from India that represented universities and colleges such as IIT Roorkee and IIIT Hyderbad.

Obtaining a ranking of 72, out of a total of 639 teams that participated, the Amrita team placed in the top 11%.

The team comprised of BTech students of Computer Science and Engineering. Third-year students, Soumya Ravidas, Savita S, Sreepriya Chalakkal and Sakhi Bansal, joined hands with Shankar Raman, a final-year student as well as Adarsh Dinesh, a second-year student, to win this honor.

These students attempted to solve challenges related to cybersecurity. They had to flag security loopholes and submit their findings to earn points. The teams tackled a total of 32 challenges in different areas named Trivia, Recon, Web, Reverse Engineering, Forensic, Binary Exploitation and Networking.

The Amrita team was able to successfully tackle 25 challenges out of 32. They secured 5500 points out of a total of 8000.

“We competed with the doyens of hacking from all over the world. Most of the sponsors of this event were big players in the field of cybersecurity and the judging panel comprised some of the best-known names in industry. For us, it was an opportunity to give our best,” shared the student team.

“We express our sincere gratitude to our mentor and guide, Mr. Vipin Pavithran, and the cybersecurity group at Amrita, for their support and encouragement,” the team added.

This global contest was organized for undergraduate students to provide an awareness of the fundamental concepts and develop practical skills in cybersecurity.

This was also potentially an opportunity for students to solicit job offers since the event attracted the sponsorship and participation of all top companies in the field.

An Amrita team from the Coimbatore campus did almost equally well, ranking at 145.

“With every contest, our teams have improved. We are hoping that within the next few years Amrita teams will seriously contend for the top spots,” stated Dr. Krishnashree Achuthan, Director, Amrita Center for Cybersecurity.

Already Amrita teams have bagged honors in popular hacking contests such as Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen University CTF 2011, Mozilla CTF 2012 and International Forecourt Standards Forum CTF 2012.

Amrita also annually conducts the Indian Capture-the-Flag (CTF) Contest, inspiring many across the country to learn secure coding practices.

October 22, 2012
School of Engineering, Amritapuri