The NSA Codebreaker Challenge is an annual cybersecurity challenge created by the United States National Security Agency. It is available to college students, alumni, and professors of United States universities. The challenge consists of a number of Tasks completed in a sequential order, often following a narrative situation that mirrors the real work of the agency. Participants must have intermediate to advanced knowledge of topics like Software Reverse Engineering, Networking, Cryptography, Malware Analysis, and Exploit Development.
I solved all 7 tasks this year, putting me at the top 1.6% of participants, or one of 93 solvers out of 5,816 participants. This year's challenge was one of the most fun I have done.
I completed the 7 tasks in the 2024 challenge, landing me a position in the top 0.59% of participants. There were only 40 solvers out of 6,820 participants, making this quite a difficult year. Unfortunately, I did not complete my writeup this year.
The 2023 challenge did not come out until late September, so I did not have time to work on it over the summer, and got bogged down in schoolwork during the semester. Due to this, I only completed 6 out of the 9 tasks, giving me a spot in the 197 people who completed Task 6 out of 5069 participants. I was still among the top 3.89% of participants however. This year's writeup is complete, I am most proud of my performance on Task 6!
This is where it all started! After getting a random email through the student bulletin, I decided to try my hand at the challenge with only 2 years of university and no cybersecurity experience under my belt. I got way further than I imagined, completing all 9 tasks. I was one of 128 solvers out of 4,846 participants, or 2.64%. This initial splash ignited my interest in cybersecurity.