Virginia HS Cyber Cup

March 20, 2027

What is the Virginia HS Cyber Cup?

The Virginia Cyber Range is hosting a statewide Capture The Flag (CTF) cybersecurity competition for Virginia public high school students! This unique opportunity allows student teams across Virginia to compete against each other to claim to be the best in the state.

The Virginia HS Cyber Cup is a cybersecurity competition focusing on various cybersecurity challenges, including web application security, network traffic analysis, log analysis, cryptography, reverse engineering, and more!

Through this endeavor, we hope to build interest in cybersecurity careers, awareness of cybersecurity best practices, and help connect the cybersecurity industry in Virginia with local school districts.

What is a Capture the Flag (CTF)?

Capture the Flag (CTF) is an interactive cybersecurity competition game where participants solve challenges by finding answer “flags” to cybersecurity challenges. The Virginia HS Cyber Cup competition will be a Jeopardy-style CTF with challenges in networking, reconnaissance, web, digital forensics, and cryptography. The Virginia Cyber Range’s Cloud CTF platform automatically maintains scoring information and provides a real-time scoreboard.

Successful CTF participants have computer and networking skills, an ability to use web resources to research and solve problems effectively. Familiarity with the Linux command line is also helpful for some challenges.

A National Priority

Information security affects people every day and has become personal. Training an expert cybersecurity workforce is now a national priority. For Virginia to continue leading in this rapidly evolving space, we need to develop a sustainable talent pipeline capable of providing skilled, industry-ready workers to meet this increasing demand. This rising demand is prompting the creation of more programs at universities, community colleges, and even high schools.

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All public high schools in Virginia are eligible to compete. Students must be enrolled in a public high school in Virginia. An educator or faculty sponsor must register their team.

Industry Partners, Community Members, and Parents are invited to sponsor the Virginia Cyber Cup.

Industry Partners, Community Members, and Parents are invited to view the Virginia HS Cyber Cup Awards Ceremony.

About the Virginia HS Cyber Cup

The Virginia Cyber Cup will include a CTF practice round and a final championship. To be invited to the Open Finals Championship, they must participate in the practice round. The event will have two CTF levels, beginner and advanced.

The beginner level is appropriate for cybersecurity students who have at least completed Virginia’s Cybersecurity Fundamentals course (6302).

The advanced level is appropriate for students who have completed subsequent cybersecurity career pathway courses, or have participated in other CTFs and who have a working knowledge in at least some advanced topics such as:

Networking (e.g. DNS, TCP/IP, wireshark, nmap scanning, etc)
Cryptography (e.g. PGP, RSA, openssl, hashing, etc)
Web security (e.g. XSS, iptables, filesystem permissions, running exploits. etc)
Digital forensics (e.g. memory analysis, hard drive/phone filesystems, etc)
Reverse engineering (e.g. buffer overflows, protocol analysis, etc)

Student teams will work with their teacher or faculty advisor to determine the appropriate level for their team to register.

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