The final of the 2024 "Yangcheng Cup" Greater Bay Area Cybersecurity Competition was successfully held on September 11th at the Nansha International Financial Forum Conference Center in Guangzhou. The competition is hosted by the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee Cyberspace Administration and organized by the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee Cyberspace Administration. The competition covers topics such as penetration testing, emergency response, data security, and AI security.
This competition gathers 2085 teams from universities, party and government enterprises and institutions across the country, with a total of more than 4000 participants. In the end, a total of 90 participating teams and 330 people made it to the finals. After more than 7 hours of peak competition, the "HackBusters" team composed of four undergraduate students from the Faculty of Data Science at City University of Macau, namely Kwok Io Kuan, Zhu Kefan, and Zhou Junye, won the Hong Kong and Macau Group Excellence Award under the guidance of Assistant Professor Cui Sanshuai.
The competition not only provides a platform for each participant to showcase themselves, exchange and learn, but also has important significance in recruiting and training outstanding talents in the field of online communication, promoting the exchange of network security technology, improving the level of national cyberspace security capabilities, enhancing and cultivating the awareness and protection skills of the whole nation's network security.
Award acceptance speech:
Faculty of Data Science student Kwok Io Kuan:
I am delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this CTF competition. During the competition, I met contestants from different companies and universities, and benefited greatly. Through communication with them, I not only improved my technical knowledge but also expanded my social network, which will be of great help to my future studies and work. The CTF competition is not only a platform to showcase technology, but also an excellent opportunity for learning and growth. Looking forward to seeing you again in the next competition.
Faculty of Data Science student Zhou Junye :
I am very honored to receive the Excellence Award in the 2024 Yangcheng Cup Greater Bay Area Cybersecurity Competition. This competition has been a highly challenging and rewarding experience for me. In the competition, I deeply realized the importance of teamwork. Special thanks to my teammates and team leader Teacher Cui for their hard work. Every discussion and debugging session have allowed me to learn a lot of new knowledge and skills. The tacit cooperation and unremitting efforts between us are the key to our success. This award is not only a recognition of our team but also inspires us to continue making progress and breakthroughs in the field of cybersecurity. In the future, I hope we can face more challenges together and continue to climb new heights!
Faculty of Data Science student Zhu Kefan
This year is the first edition of the Yangcheng Cup Hong Kong Macau Group, and we only have two weeks to prepare, so our learning is not very sufficient. Our preparation materials mainly include the Yangcheng Cup 2023 competition questions, and my main responsibility for learning is PWN, while also understanding other parts of the competition questions. In the competition, this year's main topic is penetration testing, searching for specified flag packages on the target drone webpage, and searching for intrusion file logs on the target drone. In fact, we encountered quite a few difficulties during the competition. Many of the frameworks for the competition questions were unfamiliar, and there were still many parts that needed to be learned. However, during the seven-hour competition, we finally solved some of the questions through some of the materials and tools we had prepared before. With the cooperation of our group members, we finished eighth in the Hong Kong and Macau group, and second among the six groups in Macau. However, we still have a lot to learn in the field of cybersecurity, and the experience of other groups is also worth learning from.
