In ECSC 2021, Poland was just behind Germany and ahead of Italy, which is its best result in the history. CERT Polska provided support and tutoring for the team.

The ECSC has been organized by the European Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA) since 2017. It is hosted in a different European city each year. This year it was held in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague (28/09 – 1/10). Next year it is planned in Vienna. The great interest in it shows how crucial cybersecurity is nowadays.

17 teams, each of 10 people, took part in the competition. 5 of them had to be aged 14-21 (Juniors) and 5 aged 22-26 (Seniors). The Polish team consisted of the following Juniors: Jakub Kądziołka, Kacper Kluk, Kajetan Grzybowski, Jakub Wasilewski and Szymon Borecki. They were supported by Seniors: Krzysztof Haładyn, Jakub Nowak, Patryk Balicki, Grzegorz Uriasz and Karol Baryła. Our team took 6th place in the ECSC two years ago and 4th three years ago. In 2020, the competition did not occur due to the pandemic.

This year the competition lasted two days. The order of the top three after the first day did not change completely. Behind them were many countries from Western Europe. These results show how critical cybersecurity is for Poland, which pays great attention to training staff in this area.

ECSC QUALIFICATIONS

Participants of the Polish team were selected in the local qualifications on May 20, 2021. They had to face tasks in categories such as:

• web application security,
• reverse engineering,
• cryptography
• the use of vulnerabilities in applications.

CERT Polska was responsible for their organization and care for the Polish team. It is the first Polish computer emergency response team. It operates within the NASK structures. NASK is a research institute that conducts scientific studies, operates the national .pl domain registry, and provides advanced IT services.

More information about ECSC 2021 and full final results are here.

Read more about ECSC 2021 here.