Hungarian Cyber Security Challenge 2025 (HCSC’25)

Between 24th of April and 27th of April the 8th Hungarian Cyber Security Challenge (HCSC) was organized. The competition is organized by Special Service for National Security National Cyber-Security Center (NKI), the challenges were created by HoneyLab of University of Obuda and White Hat IT Security.

The official website of HCSC is: https://nki.gov.hu/en/rendezvenyek/hcsc/

The challenges were available at: https://ctfd.nki.gov.hu/

Some statistics about the competition:

• 11 categories
• 36 challenges
• 417 registered competitiors
• 72 hours of hacking
• 229 competitors submitted at least 1 flag

I achieved the 6th place. To get the final picture, this year’s HCSC was a very tight competition, there was only a one challenge gap between the 1st and the 6th place, so I was really close, but really far. I’m not satisfied, I could not solve 4 challenges, 2 of the were very close and I also mismanaged my time and sleeping schedule. Next time! Congratulations to all other competitiors, especially the winners of each category. And of course, many thanks to the Organizers!

Normal challenges:

• crypto
  • Eccentric
  • Liberty Statue
• forensics
  • Nice Job - TBD
• misc
  • Amazeing Blockchain
  • Binge Watch
  • Interlog
  • Mystery Model
• mobile
  • Infometer
• network
  • Capture me if you can
  • Naked Bytes
  • The Silent Terminal
• osint
  • Find my mom
  • Hidden Clues
• pentest
  • Midnight Deployments
• reverse
  • License lost
  • Voldemort
• web
  • Archive
  • The complaint department
• welcome
  • welcome

Forensics VM (defense) challenges - TBD:

• Forensics 1
• Forensics 2
• Forensics 3
• Forensics 4
• Forensics 5
• Forensics 6
• Forensics 7
• Forensics 8
• Forensics 9
• Forensics 10
• Forensics 11
• Forensics 12

Other write-ups:

• Deathbaron: https://github.com/mullerdavid/ctf_writeups/tree/master/hcsc25