Cum a fost la VianuCTF 2025 – Concurs International de Cybersecurity

Participation total: 423 430 participants in total. 73 physically present, in 4 classrooms at Vianu, the rest online.

Physically present from Bucharest, but also from Suceava, Piatra Neamt, Slobozia, Valenii de Munte, Ploiesti, Targoviste, Alba Iulia, Constanta, etc.

Online participants: from all over the planet – Romania, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Latvia, Japan, Malaysia, Italy, Egypt, Russia, Hong Kong, Poland, Vietnam, Canada, India, Taiwan, Spain, Macedonia, Kosovo, USA, France, Turkey, Algeria, you name it…

From 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM, VianuCTF 2025 took place, the 3rd edition. A superb cybersecurity competition organized by (president ).

There were 4 categories:

• online – OPEN, open to anyone regardless of age or experience – the majority
• physical – MIDDLE SCHOOL
• physical – HIGH SCHOOL
• physical – UNIVERSITY

The competition was individual. The same tasks for everyone (in addition, offline participants also had a lockpicking task).

The dedicated IT and ICT teachers:

• Corina Vint
• Gabriela Boca
• Elena Dragan

The kids worked non-stop for 7 hours. A bit short by existing standards, but considering it’s a medium-level competition, it was still great.

The preparations took many days.

CyberEDU (Andrei Avadanei and Radu Carp) who helped us with the competition infrastructure.

CTFtime, the world’s largest CTF competition site, listed us and featured the event on their homepage for over a day. That’s why we had so many global participants.

TP-LINK provided professional equipment to supply high-speed standalone internet for everyone, separate from the Vianu school network. It worked flawlessly. Without them, we would have had a big problem with internet quality.

INSTAROM, ACCACE, UNSAR, CDS – helped us financially (for this event and the previous one. Today we bought 40 large pizzas from Jerry’s Pizza, water, tangerines, coffee, stationery, signage, etc…

Federation of Parents ProEDU, through Mr. Eugen Ilea, helped us with 4800 lei – 4 categories x (500 lei/1st prize, 300 lei/2nd prize, 200 lei/3rd prize, 100 lei/honorable mention A, 100 lei/honorable mention B).

ProEDU also provided T-shirts for ALL participants, volunteers, and organizers. Very cool.

Orange, our strategic partner for 3 years.

We had a few beginner participants who came without laptops, we quickly brought some, but Matei solved it rapidly.

The kids – very well-behaved and disciplined. 4 classrooms on the ground floor at Vianu were occupied. The award ceremony in the central hall, with those who did not leave (some had trains, others knew during the competition that they had no chance at prizes).

BORJOMI with their orange and lemon juices – sensation. Very tasty, and no additives.

Sanovita assisted us with healthy and tasty snacks for all participants.

provided cool prizes. gave us 20 licenses for their games (FC26).

offered cybersecurity certification packages, including courses. Plus 1000 lei for consumables.

provided science calendars (for both this event and the previous one at Vianu). We gave one to each participant:)

Below are some chronological photos from the event preparation, guest check-in, work in progress, organizational aspects…

The kids did an excellent job.