OUR HISTORY
RuCTF is an annual open intercollegiate competition and conference on information security. We have been holding it for 14 years now. In 2022, it will be the fifteenth one.
Previous RuCTF events:
Now RuCTF is:
- Competitions with more than two hundred participants
- 80+ participating teams
- An offline conference with ~ 500 attendees
- 30 organizers and developers
- Online community reaching over 15,000 IS professionals worldwide
14 years ago it all started with just a couple of auditoriums. Since then, RuCTF has been growing steadily and getting steeper every year.
And we want to tell you about our path!
ORIGIN
The First RuCTF was held in 2008. It was hosted entirely by Ural Federal University and lasted 5 days. It was the first inter-university information security competition in Russia!
Teams from 7 Russian cities took part in the game then, and the conference consisted of 6 reports.
In 2009, there were 16 teams and a running man with a flag was introduced as the main symbol of the event.
In 2010, an important event took place - RuCTF was no longer just CTF. For the first time, the schedule included workshops, master classes, small competitions and everything else that is still present at the event today.
Since 2016, another integral part of RuCTF has been held - the All-Russian Student Data Protection Olympiad. It is included in the list of Russian student Olympiads and has its own prizes and awards at each event.
FOREIGN TEAMS AND GOING OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY
One of the qualifying stages at RuCTF has always been RuCTFE. It has always been held online for participants from all over the world. In 2009, apart from Russian teams, there were teams from India, Germany, Vietnam, Austria, USA and other countries.
The best RuCTFE players received an invitation to come to Yekaterinburg and take part in the finals. In 2015, a team from China came to RuCTF for the first time, but took part out of the competition.
In 2016 there were more foreign teams: 5 teams from Germany and a team from Hungary, Austria, Italy and China.
In future years, Switzerland, Portugal and the USA will join the number of countries participating in the finals.
By 2016 RuCTF is growing so much that it has expanded beyond Ural Federal University. None of the Ural Federal University venues can accommodate the final game anymore, and it moves to the Yeltsin Centre, a modern cultural and educational space. The RuCTF finals are held at the Yeltsin Centre from 2016 to 2019 (and hopefully will be held there after the pandemic).
2019 AND OUR DAYS
RuCTF 2019 is shaping up to be our team's biggest event yet:
- A conference with over 500 attendees and more than 10 hours of presentations
- A cool conference venue at the Sverdlovsk Region's Hi-Tech Technopark
- Workshops from partners, battles, a round table and an after-party
- around 210 attendees
In 2020 a pandemic happened, we cancelled offline events. The traditional RuCTF conference was replaced by RuCTFE Conf. We professionally filmed and edited the reports. By the way, the last report was published on May 1.
On October 3, RuCTF 2021 was held online. We have invited 50 teams (which is twice as many as usual). There were an online broadcast for all spectators and participants on the day/ The conference and knowledge exchange was going on all year long!
In 2022, we have slightly changed the rules and now RuCTF is an international competition for any team at any level of experience. Feel free to register your team and compete with others!
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