Czech Cyber Team, a significant part of which consisted of students from the Faculty of Information Technology at CTU in Prague (FIT CTU), achieved an exceptional success at the international competition Ctrl+Space CTF 2025. In the finals, held at the ESTEC complex in the Netherlands—the main technology center of the European Space Agency (ESA)—the team placed 4th among the top five teams that advanced from approximately 800 registered teams worldwide. Ctrl+Space CTF made history as the first European CTF competition with direct involvement of a satellite in orbit.
Czech Cyber Team, composed in part of participants of the Capture The Flag (NI-CTF) course at FIT CTU—Lukáš Bauer, Jan Kučera, and Vojtěch Novák—achieved a total score of 2,191.21 points in the finals, securing 4th place among elite European teams. The result is all the more valuable given that the competition took place in an extremely realistic environment and simulated real-world cybersecurity scenarios for space systems.
“The competition tasks were very challenging, and many remained unsolved despite the fact that the entire competition lasted 52 hours. The length of the contest definitely tested us. We performed very well on the first day, solving a number of tasks, including some involving direct communication with an object in orbit. The second day was a bit more demanding for us, but in the end the hard work paid off—we were the only team to solve several tasks, which brought a significant point gain. For us, this is confirmation that we can stand our ground as a team even in competitions of this caliber,” says Jan Kučera, the team’s lead cryptographer.
“In addition to competing, we also attended a conference where the latest findings and academic publications in the field of space systems security were presented, and we met leading experts as well as representatives of interesting companies from the field. Even among CTF competitions, this was a unique event, and we definitely won’t miss the next edition,” adds Jan Kučera.
The competition finals took place from November 4 to 6, 2025, as part of the prestigious Security for Space Systems (3S) conference in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. During the competition, participants tackled security challenges primarily in the classic “jeopardy” format (a points-based competition format), including live communication with the D-Orbit ION Satellite Carrier, which was in real-time orbit around the Earth. The competition also featured a “king of the hill” format, in which autonomous programs from each team competed against one another rather than the participants themselves.
The qualification round was held as an open online competition lasting 24 hours, during which teams solved tasks in areas such as cryptography, reverse engineering, web security, radio communications, exploitation techniques, and space systems security.
