Two days to capture the flag, break the system, crack the cipher, ship the defence.
A two-day interschool hackathon at Westminster School Dubai, open to students across GEMS schools. Two tracks running in parallel, teams of four to six, every machine running Kali.
First come, first served — the first 10 schools to register take part. Each school enters two teams and showcases one project.
WSH 26 brings students from across GEMS schools into one building for two days of security work. Teams solve Capture the Flag challenges — exploiting vulnerabilities, reverse engineering programs, cracking cryptographic codes — and build real security software alongside it.
Both tracks run in parallel, so you engage with one or both depending on your skill level. Teams of four to six. Everything runs on Kali Linux.
Both tracks run in parallel across the two days. Enter one or enter both — they are judged independently, so a team running both is competing for two results.
Challenges released across the two days on a self-hosted CTFd platform — web exploitation, reverse engineering, cryptography, steganography, forensics, OSINT and wildcards. Beginner, intermediate and advanced tiers. Points per flag, live scoreboard throughout.
Build something real in cybersecurity — a vulnerability scanner, a secure login system, a password breach checker, a phishing detector, a firewall rule engine, an intrusion detection dashboard. A starter kit ships to every team. Submit by Day 2 and pitch it live.
Running both tracks? They run in parallel, so plan your line-up. Teams that split across CTF and the project tend to divide people rather than double output — that is your call to make, and both results are scored separately.
Certificate or team award for the top three on the CTFd scoreboard.
Certificate or team award for the top three projects after the Day 2 pitches.
Every participant receives a certificate, digital or physical.
Self-hosted, open source, and the industry standard for competitions like this one. Team registration, flag submission and the scoreboard are all built in, which means our effort goes into designing challenges rather than building a platform.
Battle-tested at scale, with no critical failures during competition.
Challenges, categories, point values and hints fully under our control.
Four to six people, one registration, one form. Do it before the deadline — the exact cut-off lands here shortly.