Dacia Team Takes 1st Place at Electron Juniors CTF

Dacia Team achieved a 1st place victory at Electron Juniors CTF, conquering 24 hours of intense cybersecurity challenges and emerging as champions!

The Challenge

Electron Juniors CTF is a premier junior-level cybersecurity competition that tests participants across the full spectrum of offensive security skills. Over 24 continuous hours, teams tackle progressively difficult challenges designed to push their technical abilities and problem-solving creativity to the limit.

The competition featured:

• Cryptography — Breaking modern encryption schemes and implementation flaws
• Web Exploitation — Finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications
• Reverse Engineering — Analyzing and understanding compiled binaries
• Binary Exploitation — Memory corruption and code execution
• Forensics — Digital investigation and evidence recovery
• OSINT — Open-source intelligence gathering

Our Strategy

From the start, we knew this 24-hour marathon would test not just our technical skills, but our ability to work effectively as a team under pressure. We approached the competition with:

1. Parallel Tasking — Team members worked on different challenges simultaneously, maximizing our throughput
2. Knowledge Sharing — Quick standups every few hours to share insights and stuck points
3. Strategic Rest — Rotating short breaks to maintain mental clarity throughout
4. Focus on Strengths — Assigning challenges based on each member’s expertise

Highlights

Hour 0-6: Strong Start

We hit the ground running, quickly solving several easier challenges to build momentum and establish our position on the leaderboard.

Hour 6-12: The Grind

The mid-competition period brought the toughest challenges. A particularly difficult cryptography problem had us stumped for hours, but persistence paid off with a crucial breakthrough.

Hour 12-18: Pushing Ahead

Despite fatigue setting in, we maintained focus and continued solving challenges. Our teamwork really shone here as we collaborated on complex multi-stage problems.

Hour 18-24: The Final Push

The last six hours were a race to maximize our score. We strategically targeted high-value challenges we knew we could solve, ultimately securing enough points to claim 1st place.

What Made The Difference

Several factors contributed to our victory:

• Diverse Skill Sets: Each team member brought unique strengths that complemented each other
• Communication: We stayed in constant contact, sharing ideas and approaches
• Persistence: We didn’t give up on difficult challenges, even when solutions weren’t immediately obvious
• Time Management: We balanced attempting hard challenges with securing points on solvable ones

Growth and Lessons

This competition taught us valuable lessons about:

• Endurance: Maintaining performance over 24 hours requires both mental and physical stamina
• Teamwork Under Pressure: How to collaborate effectively when tired and stressed
• Strategic Thinking: When to persist on a difficult problem vs. when to move on
• Technical Depth: The importance of deep knowledge in multiple security domains

Looking Forward

This 1st place finish at Electron Juniors CTF marks a significant milestone for Dacia Team. It validates our training approach and demonstrates that we can compete at a high level. We’re excited to carry this momentum into future competitions and continue growing as a team.

Thank you to the Electron Juniors organizers for creating such an engaging and challenging competition, and congratulations to all the teams that participated!

— Dacia Team