OVERVIEW
ASEAN Student Contest on Information Security (ASCIS) is the biggest annual Capture the Flag (CTF) competition in cyber security for Asean students organized by Vietnam Information Security Association (VNISA) under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Education and Training of Viet Nam with hundreds of students attended every year.
ASCIS 2023 is the 16th time competition for Vietnamese students and the 5th time for ASEAN students.
ASCIS 2022 has attracted nearly 161 teams with more than 600 students from 51 universities of 8 countries in ASEAN. The team winning the First prize of Qualifying Round of ASCIS 2022 has been chosen to participate in Cyber Sea Game 2022 and won the First prize.
The contest 2023 has 3 rounds, timeline expected:
Starting Round
– Online CTF (Jeopardy) on October 7th, 2023 (expected), within the duration of 4 hours.
– The format of this round includes: Pwnable (exploiting software errors, buffer overflow, format string, shellcode…); Reverse engineering (software source code reverse engineering, unpacking the packers, crypters to protect the software); Web (Web application attack techniques); Crypto/ACM (Decode puzzles, attack cryptographic algorithms, use programming/algorithmic skills to solve games, mazes…).
– Unlimited number of teams of institution to compete in this round.
– The teams must have points from the Starting Round to compete in the Semifinal Round.



The Semifinal Round
– The teams from Viet Nam compete onsite CTF (Jeopardy) in Northern group and Southern group, the teams from other ASEAN Member States compete online CTF (Jeopardy) in ASEAN group. Video conferencing tools may be used to surveil remote contestants to ensure fair competition. The expected date of this round is on October 28th, 2023, with its duration of roughly 9 hours, consists of 2 phases: phase 1 duration of 4 hours, phase 2 duration of 5 hours. There is a 30 minutes break between the two phases.
– The format of this round includes: Pwnable (exploiting software errors, buffer overflow, format string, shellcode…); Reverse engineering (software source code reverse engineering, unpacking the packers, crypters to protect the software); Web (Web application attack techniques); Crypto/ACM (Decode puzzles, attack cryptographic algorithms, use programming/algorithmic skills to solve games, mazes…).
– The teams must have points from the Starting Round to compete in the Semifinal Round.
– After the end of phases 1, the top 20 teams will compete Final Round, other teams continue phase 2.
Final Round
– Onsite CTF (Attack & Defense) with teams from Vietnam and online CTF (Attack & Defense) with teams from other ASEAN Member States on October 28th, 2023 (expected) within the duration of 5 hours (same time phase 2 of the Semifinal Round). In case teams from Vietnam could not able onsite participation (due to COVID-19, etc…), online participation is alternatively possible.
– In the Final Round, the teams shall be tested on their ability to counter-measure cyber-attacks against their opponents and to defend their own computer networks.


Awards
- The Semifinal Round: Each group has 01 First Prize, 03 Second Prizes, 05 Third Prizes and some Consolation Prizes (The number of prizes shall be decided by the Organizer based on the number of competing teams in each group).
- The Final Round: 01 Grand Prize, 03 Second Prizes, 05 Third Prizes and 11 Consolation Prizes
* The winning teams from ASEAN countries will receive cash prize via PayPal. Please send the team leader’s PayPal account to Organizers if your team wins.