A team from American University of Sharjah (AUS) recently won second place at the 2018 UAE National Cyber Security CTF competition, a competition where participants demonstrate their technical ability in the cybersecurity field.

Computer science and engineering student Omar Elgafri and alumna Mina Ghaly were two of the 34 participants in this year’s competition, the final round of which was held at University of Dubai on March 10. The team is now qualified to compete in the Arab Regional Cyber Security CTF that will be held in Egypt on August 8.

The competition, supported by Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC) and the Government of Dubai, was a Jeopardy Style Capture the Flag where every team had a list of challenges in different categories like reverse engineering, web security, digital forensics, network security and others. For every challenge solved, the team received points depending on the difficulty of the challenge.

Ghaly was also first place winner at the competition last year.