The "Tower of Hanoi" team, consisting of students Daniele Mammone and Marco Meinardi from the Politecnico di Milano and Bruno Halltari and Tommaso Fontana from the University of Milan, ranked third (and first in Europe) in the "Capture The Flag" competition at CSAW'21, the world's largest student-run cybersecurity event that this year involved over 50 teams from universities around the world.
The "Tower of Hanoi" team is coordinated by Prof. Mario Polino, member of the NecstLab computer security group, led by Prof. Stefano Zanero.
CSAW is organised by the Center for Cybersecurity at New York University, and has now reached its 18th edition. It includes competitions, round table discussions, and events focusing on the latest technologies for protecting people, systems and data.
In the Capture The Flag cybersecurity competitions, the participants compete in teams, and have to identify realistic security problems in complex applications that are specially created by the organisers. The aim is to use these problems to read sensitive data (the so-called flags), while also defending yourself against attacks by the opposing teams.