National Cyber Scholarship Competition 2021 Writeup
For this cybersecurity competition, I was named a National Cyber Scholar with Honors and was awarded a $3,000 scholarship. Scholar with Honors is the highest accolade available through the NCS Competition, and is awarded to the top 30 National Cyber Scholars.
During the competition period, which was held from April 5th, 2021 12:00PM EST to April 7th, 2021 12:00PM EST, I placed 23rd out of 3,277 (top 0.7%) with a score of 6,150 points. I completed 76% of the challenges and earned 54% of the available points. Since then, I have solved every challenge and achieved the maximum score of 11,400 points.
This CTF allowed me to practice my web exploitation, reverse engineering, networking, cryptography, and binary exploitation skills.
Regarding the organization: “Cybersecurity is one of the world’s fastest growing industries. The National Cyber Scholarship Foundation is working hard to address the current cyber skills shortage by developing and championing the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, through the provision of $2 million in college scholarships and $13.8 million in cybersecurity training.” - The National Cyber Scholarship Foundation
Regarding the competition: “This NCS Competition is a new type of CTF that has challenges for every level… Qualified students will compete nationally to win one of three tiers of award, with the highest scorers being awarded college scholarships to use at the school of their choice to pursue further study related to cybersecurity. This CTF competition will allow students to rank highly by completing challenges across a range of disciplines, or to focus their efforts on a particular area, such as defensive hacking.” - The National Cyber Scholarship High School Competition
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/HHousen/NCS-Competition/
Project link: https://ncs2021.haydenhousen.com/