{"id":192110,"date":"2026-03-02T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/02\/uc-cybersecurity-club-holds-capture-the-flag-hackathon-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T13:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:35:15","slug":"uc-cybersecurity-club-holds-capture-the-flag-hackathon-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/02\/uc-cybersecurity-club-holds-capture-the-flag-hackathon-news\/","title":{"rendered":"UC cybersecurity club holds \u201ccapture the flag\u201d hackathon | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

UC cybersecurity club holds \u201ccapture the flag\u201d hackathon | News<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.newsrecord.org\/news\/uc-cybersecurity-club-holds-capture-the-flag-hackathon\/article_378ceb08-10f7-4e2c-b39f-e0900d788158.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-02 12:16:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.newsrecord.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

Contestants gather in the 1819 Innovation Center for the 2026 BearcatCTF hackathon at the University of Cincinnati on Feb. 21, 2026.<\/p>\n

Bhavya Pant | Contributor<\/p>\n

Members of Cyber@UC club, a student cybersecurity club at the University of Cincinnati (UC), hosted a capture-the-flag (CTF) hackathon at the 1819 Innovation Hub on Feb. 21, 2026. Known as BearcatCTF, the annual event drew over 900 virtual and in-person competitors from around the Greater Cincinnati area.In a CTF-style competition, participants work to decode challenges and obtain hidden \u201cflags\u201d to score points and climb the leaderboard. The contest\u2019s scoring system works inversely: the more often a challenge is solved, the less points it awards.\u201cThere\u2019s different versions of it, but the most common that we run is called Jeopardy style,\u201d said event organizer Andrew Margolin. \u201cWe have 44 distinct challenges where you\u2019re looking to find a flag of some sort, expose that flag and then submit it for points.\u201dBearcatCTF challenges are developed in-house by Cyberclub members and range from reverse engineering and cryptography to networking and web exploitation.\u00a0\u201cWe also have more networking-based challenges,\u201d said event organizer and first-year cybersecurity major Matthew Bryce. \u201cThese are technical in a sense, but it\u2019s something anyone can understand and quickly get into. This is kind of for everyone.\u201dWhile the competition calls for a high screentime, its organizers said they worked to design an experience that isn\u2019t just sitting alone in front of a screen for 24 hours.\u201cWe encourage students to go talk to sponsors and to each other, building communication and networking skills alongside their technical ones,\u201d Margolin said.\u00a0The contest also included a number of third-party challenges submitted by company sponsors of BearcatCTF. The curated challenges offered participants the chance to engage with potential co-op and internship recruiters during the competition.\u00a0Sponsors included HII Mission Technologies, Fifth Third Bank and the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of the Information System Security Association.Bryce says Cyber@UC started hosting CTF tournaments after a group of graduating club members \u201cwanted to build something of their own.\u201dBearcatCTF \u201chas since expanded to a much larger scale,\u201d Bryce said. \u201cNot just from Cincinnati, but also across the nation and internationally as well.\u201dAccording to Margolin, the club took a more direct approach towards CTF recruitment in 2026.\u00a0Margolin says Cyber@UC members asked UC faculty members to grant extra credit to first-year students who competed. Margolin estimates around 25% of 2026 in-person attendees were first-years.Bryce said the competition was intended to provide practical experience in cybersecurity beyond what contestants learn in the classroom. He said outside research is not only allowed but expected and encouraged.\u201cThe majority of our problems, you\u2019re not going to learn in your classrooms,\u201d Bryce said. \u201cYou have to do your own research and then implement it. We\u2019re happy to help people get started but we also want them to figure it out for themselves.\u201d\u00a0According to Margolin, interested students do not need extensive preparation or background knowledge in order to compete.\u201cYou don\u2019t need anything beyond your beginner classes and basic Linux knowledge, and even if you don\u2019t have that, you can still start,\u201d Margolin said. \u201cWhether you were doing system administration, networking or programming, [BearcatCTF is] just an added angle on top of that.\u201dOf the 2026 competitors, only one team managed to clear every challenge put in front of them. The top scoring team in the in-person division was KobiWare from Northern Kentucky University, finishing with 4,520 points.According to Bryce, winning was never the only point. \u201cFor us, success is seeing the event grow, seeing people learn and bringing new people in,\u201d he said. \u201cSeeing what it\u2019s about, finding out if there\u2019s a certain area they enjoy and maybe opening their eyes a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UC cybersecurity club holds \u201ccapture the flag\u201d hackathon | News https:\/\/www.newsrecord.org\/news\/uc-cybersecurity-club-holds-capture-the-flag-hackathon\/article_378ceb08-10f7-4e2c-b39f-e0900d788158.html Publish Date: 2026-03-02 12:16:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":192111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com\/newsrecord.org\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/5\/77\/5778e2d8-eca0-4777-b6f9-ffc74b1435b2\/69a5c62b777c3.image.jpg?crop=1662%2C873%2C0%2C187&resize=1200%2C630&order=crop%2Cresize","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-192110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192112,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192110\/revisions\/192112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}