Duy Tan University students ranked first at Iran Tech Olympics CTF 2025 - Attack-Defense CTF

Taking place live in Tehran (Iran) from October 27 to 29, 2025, the Iran Tech Olympics CTF 2025 competition attracted 12,000 contestants from 65 participating countries (double that of 2024).

Surpassing many participating teams, team 4lias from Duy Tan University (DTU) excellently ranked No. 1 among international teams and top 5/27 in the entire group at the Attack-Defense CTF 2025 round.

As a team ranked in the Top 13 in the world in the Qualifying round, Duy Tan University's 4lias team consists of 4 members:

• Nguyen Ba Khanh
• Vo Tuan Anh
• Le Khac Huy
• Nguyen Tri Tam

has successfully become the only representative of Vietnam to enter the Final round of Iran Tech Olympics CTF 2025 held in Iran.

MSc. Nguyen Nhat Hoang (middle) with team 4lias at the Iran Tech Olympics CTF 2025 competition

Iran Tech Olympics CTF 2025 is a large-scale and professional competition organized by the Iranian Government . The event brings together more than 1,100 technology experts from 16 countries, including: Russia, Pakistan, Oman, Vietnam, Turkey, Tunisia, Iraq, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, India, Lebanon, Indonesia, Romania, Algeria, the Netherlands and the host country Iran.

The teams compete in 6 main categories including:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Cybersecurity
• Programming
• Robots
• Drones
• Internet of Things (IoT)

In particular, Cybersecurity is considered the most intense direct "intellectual arena", requiring strategic thinking ability, high technical skills and strong team spirit with 3 competitions: Attack/Defense CTF, Hardware Security and Speed-Run CTF.

Attack-Defense CTF is the first round of the Cybersecurity competition, where each team must defend their own system while attacking their opponent's system to capture the "flag" and score points. Each team is provided with a server containing vulnerable services, forcing them to quickly analyze, patch, and exploit and attack the weaknesses of other teams to gain an advantage in the competition.

Duy Tan University's 4lias team is in the Top 5 leading teams.

Right from the start, Duy Tan University's 4lias team quickly divided the tasks very scientifically : one group was in charge of analyzing vulnerabilities and defending the system, another group focused on combined attacks, searching for and capturing "flags". As the difficulty increased and the Organizing Committee continuously updated the flags and SLA (service availability) scores, 4lias maintained stable performance, maintaining high "uptime" while ensuring effective attacks. After a day of focused competition, Duy Tan University's 4lias team surpassed many strong opponents to rank Top 5/27 in the entire group and Top 1 in the international team block - a proud achievement, when the remaining teams all came from businesses or professional organizations in the field of Network Security.

Student Nguyen Ba Khanh - captain of team 4lias shared: " Participating in the competition is an extremely special experience when we get to meet, compete and learn from many strong teams from all over the world. From here, we have broadened our perspective as well as learned how to think and build new strategies in the Attack-Defense model . Before leaving, teachers and the school have supported us a lot from training, preparing equipment to perfecting skills, helping us to be able to fully devote ourselves to the competition. Specialized knowledge such as Computer Networks, Programming and Vulnerability Exploitation is really useful to help us confidently compete and have a good position in the competition."

High concentration in competition helps Duy Tan University's 4lias team have a very good ranking position.

Directly leading the Duy Tan University team to participate in the competition, MSc. Nguyen Nhat Hoang - lecturer of the Department of Information Security - Faculty of Computer Network Engineering & Communications said: " The 4lias team has demonstrated a strong spirit, a solid knowledge base, and a serious and professional competitive spirit. The achievements of the 4lias team not only demonstrate the capacity of Duy Tan University students when they can confidently compete with experts and engineers from the world's leading technology corporations, but also affirm the intelligence, courage and strong integration ability of Vietnamese students in highly specialized fields. This is also a convincing proof of the effectiveness of the Research - Practice - Application orientation that Duy Tan University has steadfastly pursued over the years, with many generations of students always affirming their professional capacity and confidently reaching out to the world".

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/sv-dh-duy-tan-dung-dau-bang-tai-iran-tech-olympics-ctf-2025-attack-defense-ctf-185251115114017266.htm