Austria Cyber Security Challenge 2024
The qualifying rounds for this year’s Austria Cyber Security Challenge (ACSC) will start in a few days. A kickoff event is scheduled for March 16th from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at TUW and on Discord aimed at offering valuable insights to to provide participants with crucial insights into the competition’s rules and conditions, ensuring they are well-prepared for the challenges ahead.
ACSC 2024 introduces a new modus operandi. Starting from March 18th, pupils, apprentices, and students can qualify for the final of ACSC 2024 in two age-graded categories. Anyone over 25 who is interested has the chance to compete for the Austrian national championship in the open class. The ACSC 2024 qualification will be structured into three distinct rounds, each lasting roughly a week:
Round 1: March 18th to 24th
Round 2: April 22nd to 28th
Round 3: May 13th to 19th
Participants can register at: https://verbotengut.at/anmeldung/
As in previous years, we will maintain a dedicated Discord channel for real-time queries about the qualification process and specific tasks.
This year, the qualification challenges are drawn from the openECSC2024 competition, which sees concurrent participation from across Europe. These challenges are designed to cater to a broad spectrum of participants, from newcomers to highly skilled competitors, and will vary in difficulty. Expect the complexity of tasks to incrementally increase with each round, starting from relatively simpler challenges in Round 1 to more demanding ones in the final round.
The top 20 school pupils, 20 students, and 21 open class competitors will secure a place in the mid-September ACSC finals in Vienna. Additionally, those who excel at a European level will earn an invitation to join Team Austria for the ECSC2024 finals in Turin, Italy, showcasing their qualifying prowess.
In an enlightening conversation with “futurezone”, Marco Squarcina, the coach of Team Austria for the European Cyber Security Challenge (ECSC), shared his insights on the invaluable learning opportunities presented by the ACSC. He highlighted the diversity of skills that participants are required to master, ranging from web security, binary exploitation, cryptography, to reverse engineering. Marco emphasized the unique learning experience that encourages participants to concentrate on the vital components of systems or applications, to embrace the unknown, withstand pressure, and think on their feet. In his opinion, the competencies participants develop are not only pivotal within the cybersecurity industry but are also in high demand from companies. Moreover, he pointed out that the event serves as “an exceptional platform to connect with like-minded individuals and possibly forge new friendships.”
Read the full interview with Marco Squarcina and Manuel Reinsperger on futurezone at “ACSC 2024: Diese Tipps geben Profis den Nachwuchs-Hackern“
