A capture the flag (CTF) contest is a special kind of cybersecurity competition designed to challenge its participants to solve computer security problems and/or capture and defend computer systems.

Capture the flag competitions have elevated from their humble roots to reach sport-level status, with thousands of individual games and leagues now taking place every year across the globe.

A CTF challenge is often times aimed at bringing out speed and coordination among participants, be it a group or an individual.

There are a number of topics to be tackled including but not limited to website application penetration, steganography (the practice of concealing messages or information within other non-secret text or data example being a jpeg media), cryptography and reverse engineering which could be instrumental for malware analysis or application packages probing. Above all, CTF competitions are always organized so as to bring about social/physical networking among “1337s”

In March 2021, Swift Intellect took center stage in organizing an Intervarsity CTF challenge in Nairobi, Kenya. AFRALTI took part in the challenge as a sponsor among other sponsors namely, Macrosec, Africa Hackon, Impremium Middle East, Rochestone and Creative Grounds Technologies.

The challenge brought together University students from across Kenya, which consisted of; University of Nairobi, Masinde Muliro, KCA, USIU, Strathmore, Kabianga, Dedan Kimathi, Multimedia and Excel Global. The students took part in the 12 hours hacking challenge where the team from KCA university took the lead followed by ExcelGlobal College and University of Nairobi as the 1st and 2nd runners up respectively. The top 3 teams received course vouchers from Rocheston.

Swift intellect limited came to a realization that the cyber security space in Kenya was growing exponentially and the best place to start career and team building is at the university/college level if not “as soon as possible”. In light of this realization, prizes were chosen so as to foster teamwork among college/university students in matters cyber security.

All partners believe, backed by proven events from across the globe that such challenges help foster and grow the cyber security community which includes the youth.

The event will be held annually, as we grow to involve countries across the EAC region and consequentially across the continent.