Purdue University secures second place in MITRE’s 2025 Embedded Capture the Flag Cybersecurity Competition
A team of students from Purdue University earned second place in the 2025 Embedded Capture the Flag (eCTF) competition—an international cybersecurity challenge hosted by MITRE.
The Purdue team, comprised of students from the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the School of Applied and Creative Computing, and Department of Computer Science, finished second --- ahead of more than 130 other teams --- from around the world, earning a $5,000 prize. The awards were presented at an April 25 ceremony at Tufts University, celebrating the end of the semester-long competition, which ran from Jan. 15 through April 16.
The MITRE eCTF, now in its 10th year, is a hands-on, hardware-focused cybersecurity competition that immerses students in real-world challenges. Unlike traditional online capture-the-flag competitions, the eCTF targets physical embedded systems and includes both attack and defense components.
In this year’s challenge, teams were tasked with designing and implementing a secure Satellite TV system. The goal: to create a system that could securely encode and decode satellite TV data streams while defending against unauthorized access to protected channels. During the first phase of the competition, students built their systems based on a set of challenge requirements. In the second phase, they turned offensive—analyzing and attempting to compromise the systems built by other teams.
“I’m super impressed with the performance of the students throughout the years,” said Santiago Torres-Arias, Assistant Professor of ECE. “This challenge not only shows that our students are excellent hackers, but also top-notch embedded systems builders. Throughout the competition, not a single enemy team was able to successfully attack Purdue’s system. If they keep this up, I am confident they will reach first place in a future iteration.”
More than 1,200 students from 123 schools in 17 countries competed in the 2025 eCTF, working in teams to secure real physical devices—broadening the scope of the challenge to include physical and proximal access attacks.
“I'm incredibly proud of all the students on the team and the successes that they've had over the years,” said Christina Garman, Assistant Professor in Purdue’s Department of Computer Science. “Their consistent ranking amongst the top teams in the country year after year demonstrates their commitment and both their excellent offensive as well as defensive security skills across a variety of areas. Given their track record, I am sure we will continue to see many successes in the future."
This is the third time that Purdue secures a top 10 spot, and the highest ranking they achieved so far. The team has shown continuous improvement, by achieving a higher place every time they have participated. This is thanks to its combination of veteran students and new recruits that help balance the breadth and dept of the teams’ hacking skills.
“We were one of nine teams to have never been successfully attacked,” said b01lers member Kevin Yu. “By expanding our automation infrastructure, we were able to secure 18 automated flag submissions, among which five were first bloods. All in all, we managed to finish in 2nd place!”
The competition was sponsored in part by the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub and supported by leading organizations including CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Analog Devices, Rolls-Royce, and Sysdig.
As students take aim on a possible first place for the 2026 edition, they are looking for new members to help strengthen their skills. Students interested in trying out for the Purdue eCTF team can join the b01ers discord channel at https://discord.gg/J7n49Hkp.
Purdue’s performance in the 2025 competition underscores the university’s commitment to providing experiential learning opportunities that prepare students for careers in cybersecurity and embedded systems engineering.