25,000 spectators, 6,000 solo participants, and 138 teams in cyber exercises — how CyberCamp 2024 went

The theme of CyberCamp 2024 is the attack chain, Cyber Kill Chain, so participants simultaneously listened to reports from information security specialists on how to build effective protection against cyberattacks. Every day, 25,000 viewers connected to the event's live broadcast.

We tell you how the largest cyber exercises in Russia went.

Went with the desire to win. Who won the CyberCamp 2024 cyber exercises

The largest cyber exercises in Russia, which were held for the third time, gathered 138 teams: 92 teams competed in the corporate league, 46 in the student league. In total, this is more than 600 people. They were selected from 2,000 applicants — 465 teams applied to participate in the CyberCamp 2024 cyber exercises.

All participants were divided into three factions — Blue (monitoring and investigation team), Red (offensive security team), Yellow Team (architects and methodologists team). The Red Team won the faction competition, and the following teams scored the most points in the cyber exercises.

Corporate League

First place: DeepPurple — 2850.81 points

Second place: akPots_team — 2794.76 points

Third place: CheemSquad — 2719.45 points

«We came with the desire to win, as the second place last year showed that we can do better. For this, we carefully selected the team, balanced the "reds" and "blues". The event itself went well, the tasks were diverse and interesting. We got used to getting up at 8 in the morning and going to bed at 2 at night, as the main work did not go away», — says Philipp Kuznetsov from the DeepPurple team.

Student League

First place: EXE1sior (Far Eastern Federal University) — 2459.77 points

Second place: KOTN (Pacific State University) — 2419.35 points

Third place: Ransom_abcd (Tyumen State University) — 2349.31 points

«The tasks are cool, we really liked them. Especially pleased with Sokoban. In general, this is our first such experience, but we managed to win», — says Artyom Pryakhin from the EXE1sior team.

The best participants of the corporate league received 300,000, 200,000 and $1,030.93, and the student league — 100,000, 70,000 and $515.46. In addition, the top 6 teams of the student league (EXE1sior, KOTN, Ransom_abcd, IBEEE, MagicCrew, TTPI) reached the finals of the International Cybersecurity Games — they will take part in the Standoff cyber battle. This opportunity was provided to CyberCamp participants for the first time.

«Our viewers wore out their fingers to reach the last level». About interactives for viewers

In parallel with the team cyber exercises, there were interactive activities for solo participants: more than 30 tasks were developed for them.

For the first time this year, speakers participated in the preparation of interactive activities for individual participants of CyberCamp 2024. For example, the audience was invited to deal with intruders together with Pavel Ivanov from "Infosystems Jet", answer questions about ransomware programs from Oleg Skulkin from BI.ZONE, investigate an incident together with Lada Antipova from Angara Security, study a malicious domain with Vitaly Evsikov from Inseca, answer questions about detection rules together with Diana Kozhushok from R-Vision, study audit logs with Anastasia Petrova from Biocad, answer questions about DDoS attacks together with Curator, investigate an attack together with Vladislav Azersky and Ivan Gruz from F.A.C.C.T., and more.

The speakers themselves also participated in the interactive activities after the presentations — they took quizzes, guessed AI-generated images, and answered questions from the audience live.

There were also entertaining tasks for the audience on the platform. One of them was to play the Cyber Kill Snake game.

“Every year for the event we develop a game that our viewers could play and have a great time. In 2024, we came up with Cyber Kill Snake. Players had to guide the snake through all the traps, collect the Kill Chain and execute the attack. The game turned out to be very dynamic - our viewers wore out their fingers to reach the last level,” says Alexander Morkovchin, Head of Development Department of the Information Security Consulting Center "Infsystems Jet".

“It was my first experience.” CyberCamp 2024 as a platform for debuts

A total of 25 reports were presented at CyberCamp 2024 by representatives of Infsystems Jet, BI.ZONE, F.A.C.C.T., Positive Technologies, R-Vision, Kaspersky Lab, Code of Security, and others. For three days, speakers talked about how to build effective protection against cyberattacks and increase cyber resilience.

CyberCamp 2024 became a debut platform for many speakers. For example, Axel PRO Information Security Architect Vyacheslav Belyankin, who deployed the infrastructure for the first CyberCamp, gave his first presentation at CyberCamp 2024.

“The preparation process was as simple and clear as possible. I formulated the topic, submitted it for consideration to the organizers, prepared the report, passed the review, and presented it. The preparation time for the report was reasonable, the support was great, I hope to speak again next year,” says Vyacheslav.

Boris Nesterov, a member of the winning team of the CyberCamp 2023 corporate league, who performed for CyberNoobs last year, made his debut as a speaker at the online camp. Today, Boris is a cybersecurity threat research analyst at R-Vision, and at CyberCamp 2024 he presented a report "Enhancing the monitoring subsystem: detecting attacks using eBPF-based solutions".

"It is much harder to perform as a speaker. This is my first experience. I was especially nervous when answering the host's questions after the report - some of them were very unexpected. I will continue to practice public speaking," concludes Boris.

Boris's colleague Diana Kozhushok, head of the cybersecurity threat analysis and detection group at R-Vision, also performed for the first time.

"This is my first experience participating in such a large-scale event, and of course, I was worried, but I managed to cope with the excitement and convey the material correctly," says Diana.

"I am very inspired by the CyberCamp anime series. On the one hand, it reminds me of well-known plots where technology plays a key role, like those used in 'Black Mirror' and 'Mr. Robot', on the other hand, it refers to the work of cybersecurity specialists, similarly investigating the chain of investigations," says Anastasia Petrova, CISO of Biocad.

«I am very much looking forward to the development of the cartoon and hope that by the next CyberCamp a full season of anime, consisting of eight episodes, will be released», — adds Alexander Terekhov, process automation manager at "Infosystems Jet".

The anime series "The Hero's Path. Continuation" is available on the social networks of "Infosystems Jet" on Rutube and VK. The recordings of the reports will also be published there soon. See you next year!