CSAW’24 marks the 11th anniversary of CSAW MENA (Middle East North Africa) organized by NYU Abu Dhabi. CSAW NYU Abu Dhabi is managed by a team of undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers from the Engineering Department and the Center for Cyber Security.
CSAW 2024 MENA at NYUAD was a resounding success, bringing together cybersecurity researchers, students and professionals from across the region to share knowledge, engage in friendly competition, and contribute to the advancement of cybersecurity.
Total Participants in final rounds – 118 students and researchers, reflecting a 34% surge in participant numbers compared to previous years.
6 Competitions
- Capture the Flag – CTF
- Applied Research Competition – ARC
- Hack My Robot – HMR
- BioHack 3D
- LLM CTF Attack Competition
- AI Hardware Attack Competition (New addition this Year)
CSAW’24 MENA featured an engaging keynote by Luca Di Bartolomeo, a seasoned CTF player turned PhD at EPFL. With extensive experience in global CTF finals, including DEFCON and XCTF, Luca’s talk, “The CTF Player Pipeline: From Noob to Addicted,” shared insights into the journey of becoming a dedicated CTF participant. His expertise inspired attendees to explore and excel in the dynamic world of cybersecurity challenges.
Capture the Flag
CSAW CTF is an entry-level, jeopardy style CTF, designed for university-level students who are interested in the field of security. Challenge categories will include: binary exploitation, reverse engineering, cryptography, web security, forensics, mobile security, industrial control systems, and miscellaneous challenges. CSAW CTF occurs over two rounds: a Qualifying Round in September and a Final Round in November.
The heart of CSAW, the CTF competition, saw intense battles of skill and strategy as teams competed to solve a series of challenging cybersecurity puzzles for a non-stop 36 hours. Participants demonstrated their technical prowess and problem-solving abilities in this highly competitive and engaging event.
- 37 participants from four different countries competed in the final round, with 10 teams emerging as finalists out of a total of 90 teams. The top three scoring teams out of the 10 finalists were declared the winners.
Congratulations to the CTF 2024 Winners!
0x1a4, TEK-UP University, Tunisia
Knani Alaaeddine
Chebbi Jasser
Badreddine Chamkhi
Knani Mohamed Aziz
2nd Place
Garidi, Higher National School of Computer Science, Algeria
Abderaouf Louggani
Abdelkhalek Beraoud
Abderahmane Oubahi
Abderraouf Dandani
3rd Place
DEADSEC, Applied Science Private University, Jordan
Jaleel Bolbol Abdalla
Hamza Abderrahim
Applied Research Competition
This “Best Paper Award” assesses the top scholarly security research from the previous year. The focus of this competition is on research that has a practical impact. With eligibility limited to already published papers or camera-ready papers, CSAW has a reputation for drawing some of the best security research worldwide.
Congratulations to the ARC 2024 Winners!
1st Place
Marouene Boubakri, University of Carthage Tunis, Tunisia
for the paper “Architectural Security and Trust Foundation for RISC-V”
2nd Place
Robert Merget, Technology Innovation Institute (TII), UAE
for the paper “With Great Power Come Great Side Channels: Statistical Timing Side-Channel Analyses with Bounded Type-1 Errors”
Hack My Robot
This year’s Hack My Robot competition pushed the boundaries with a focus on autonomous soil compactors, highlighting the critical safety and quality implications of potential compromises. Out of 9 stellar teams, 5 advanced to the intense finals, where students aimed to hack a construction environment robot, disrupting its functionalities and stealing data. The competition witnessed creative and technically complex attacks from all finalists, but ultimately, the 3 best teams emerged as the ultimate winners.
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- 19 participants from four different countries competed in the final round, with 5 teams emerging as finalists out of a total of 9 teams.
Congratulations to the HMR 2024 Winners!
1st Place
Mr. Robot
Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan
Badi AbuAlGhanam
Mohammad AlSarabi
2nd Place
Botics
Higher Institute of Computer Science Tunis Elmanar, Tunisia
Ichrak Eddor Mnijli
Foued Saidi
3rd Place
MakerSpace
American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Hassan Abouelela
Malik Hader
Abdulla Bin Saifudheen
Yousef Irshaid
BioHack 3D
BioHack 3D at CSAW 2024 marked a groundbreaking event as the second workshop and hackathon solely dedicated to Biochip Security and its intersection with 3D printing technology. The one-day event focused on exploring vulnerabilities related to PCR biochips, shedding light on crucial aspects of security in this emerging field. With participation from across the UAE, a total of 21 teams engaged in the virtual qualifying round. However, the competition was fierce, allowing only 5 elite teams to advance to the final round. In the end, one exceptional team emerged victorious, claiming the top spot.
- 5 Teams qualified to the finals out of 21 teams
Congratulations to the BioHack 3D 2024 Winners!
Team AltF4
University of Wollongong in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Hadiyya Mattummathodi
Mariah Khalifa
Riaz Mohammed
Muhammad Ansari
LLM Attack Competition
With rapid advancements in large language models, LLMs have become integral to modern systems—introducing new and complex security challenges. The LLM CTF Attack Competition 2024 builds on prior successes, challenging participants to explore, exploit, and defend against vulnerabilities unique to language model–powered applications, pushing the boundaries of AI security research.
Congratulations to the LLM CTF Attack Competition 2024 Winners!
1st Place
Team PBD
Pearl Rwauya
Simon Grange
Safa Al Almeri
2nd Place
Team 原神 (Transliteration: Genshin Impact)
Qi Sun
Pavel Nikolaitchev
Yiyi Chen
3rd Place
Team Pokémon Master
Joonha Yu
Jun Lee
Yumi Omori
