CyberHorizon CTF

An interactive summary of the successful Capture The Flag event hosted by Kuwait College of Science and Technology (KCST).

Event Overview

Concept

Ghabgathon 2025 merged the traditional Kuwaiti "Ghabga" gathering with a hackathon's intensity. This year's "CyberHorizon CTF" theme focused on cultivating practical skills in offensive and defensive cybersecurity to address the evolving threat landscape, aligning with Kuwait's national objectives.

Sponsors

  • National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC)
  • QUADRON Cybersecurity Services
  • Gulf Store
  • Kuwait Information Technology Society (KITS)

Key Achievements

  • ▶ Fostered practical skill application in realistic scenarios.
  • ▶ Showcased student-led innovation in platform and challenge design.
  • ▶ Identified top-tier cybersecurity talent from across Kuwait.
  • ▶ Contributed directly to Kuwait's national cybersecurity goals.

By The Numbers

25+

Active Participants

52

Unique Challenges

2057

Total Submissions

9

Universities

The Participants

The event drew a diverse group of aspiring tech professionals from universities across Kuwait, creating a rich environment for competition and learning. This section provides an overview of the participant demographics.

University Representation

Academic Majors

The Challenge

The competition featured 52 challenges with a total of 3,275 possible points. The challenges were designed to test a wide array of cybersecurity skills. Click on a category in the charts below to see example challenges.

Challenge Categories by Count

Point Distribution by Category

Example Challenges

Select a category from one of the charts above to view examples.

Competition Results

2nd Place
Eng. Roshdi Hussam
KCST - ECE
2250 pts
Prize: 200 KD
1st Place
Eng. Othman Aldhufiri
KCST - Computer Engineering
2825 pts
Prize: 300 KD
3rd Place
Eng. Dawood Boland
AUK - Computer Engineering
2200 pts
Prize: 100 KD

Top 10 Performers

Rank User Name Affiliation Score

Tech Deep Dive

The CyberHorizon platform was custom-built on a scalable and secure cloud architecture to ensure a seamless experience. This section highlights the core technologies and architecture used.

Simplified Architecture Flow

User Requests
▼
CloudFront (CDN) & WAF (Firewall)
▼
Application Load Balancer
▼
EC2 Instances (Auto Scaling Group)
▼
RDS Database (MySQL)
S3 Storage (Assets)

Technology Stack

Python

Backend

Flask

Web Framework

MySQL

Database

JavaScript

Frontend

Docker

Containerization

AWS

Cloud Provider

Terraform

Infrastructure as Code