Students from High School North founded High School Capture the Flag, a competition to educate high schoolers across the country about computer security. HSCTF is an intense computer security competition in which competitors use ingenuity and computer science skills to find a series of increasingly hard to find flags — encrypted, hidden, or otherwise stored somewhere difficult to access.
More than 2,000 high school students on more than 750 teams from across the country and the world competed in HSCTF, and competitors came from more than 30 states and nations including Belgium, Switzerland, South Korea, and Ukraine. The event took place online from May 18 to 25.
The founders, all students from High School North, include Jacob Edelman, grade 10; Alok Tripathy, grade 11; Ben Edelman, grade 12; Aaron Weiss, grade 12; Ernest Chiu, grade 12; and Aaron Berger, grade 12. All the organizers are officers of High School North’s Computer Science Club, which is advised by Tom Connolly, a computer science teacher at High School North.
While Capture the Flag competitions are traditionally targeted at college students or industry professionals, HSCTF was designed for younger students who might be interested in computer science. It included areas of computer science and cybersecurity such as cryptography, reverse engineering, programming languages, forensics, and algorithms.
Due to the success of HSCTF 2014, the organizers have announced that another competition is being planned for next spring. To see a complete list of 2014 rankings, challenges, and detailed solutions, visit HSCTF.com.
