NZCSC 2026 will be held on
Online round: 21st August - 30th Aug.
On campus rounds: 9th and 10th Oct.
The CTF will consist of multiple challenges. Participants will compete to find hidden "flags" embedded within each challenge.
The topics that the challenges cover include, but are not limited to:
The tools that can be used for solving sepecific topics are listed below, but not limited to:
NZCSC is the New Zealand Cyber Security competition which is held annually. The competition is open to all New Zealanders and is designed to promote interest in cyber security and encourage students to pursue careers in this field.
A CTF (Capture The Flag) is a cyber security exercise consisting of multiple puzzles/challenges. Each puzzle has a flag hidden somewhere and the challenge is to find the flag. The flag usually is a sequence of alphanumeric characters. Once you find a flag you get some points. The objective is the find as many flags as possible and collect points.
Anyone in New Zealand can participate in NZCSC.
You only participate solo.
Each participant competing individually will be assigned to one of the following ranked categories:
No. There is no fee to participate.
Yes! More information coming soon.
More information coming soon.
Cyber security (or simply systems security) is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and data from digital attacks, unauthorised access, damage, or theft. It involves implementing technologies, processes, and controls to secure access to information and services, ensuring its confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Cyber security is cross-sectional to computer science, ranging from hardware security to social engineering techniques.
Our group, Cybersecurity Researchers of Waikato (CROW), tackles pressing research problems and covers some of the most relevant areas in Cybersecurity, such as (alphabetical order):
The key research group personnel is four faculty with expertise on the topics previously, complemented by a strong team of Research Programmers, PhD students, Master of Cybersecurity (MCS) students, and Honours students.
Our team expertise supports a range of cyber security papers/courses at all levels, including:
The infrastructure of our research group includes a spacious lab space regularly attended by the team, a powerful server to crunch large datasets (e.g. network traces and system logs), and a cluster of 40+ Internet-facing machines that we use for experimentation and measurements, including in demonstrations and practical work part of our lectures.
Since 2014, we have organised the NZ Cybersecurity Challenge, helping to spark interest in Cybersecurity in young students as well as provide a forum for the discussion of cybersecurity trends in NZ. It has attracted a large number of students every year, of all levels, industry participants, and sponsors, which help us grant awards for the winners.
Together with New Zealand industry partners, multi-national companies and international consortia, we work on discovering and disclosing vulnerabilities that expose user data to dangers in both systems and networks.
Associate Professor Marinho Barcellos
Senior Lecturer, Programme Lead Computer Science
Since October 2019 I have been with the University of Waikato. In the past, I worked at INF/UFRGS Federal University (Associate Professor, 2010–2019), UNISINOS University (Adjunct Professor, 1993–2008), PUC-RS University (2008–2009), as well as an Invited Adjunct Professor at UNAL, Colombia.
I have regularly contributed to the network research community by serving in multiple committees. I was the general co-chair of ACM SIGCOMM 2016 and have been serving as Program Committee co-chair of ACM CoNEXT 2022. I have contributed as a member of several Technical Program Committees of conferences: ACM CoNEXT, IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE ICNP, ACM HotNets, ACM IMC, IFIP Networking, etc. I was a member of the ACM SIGCOMM Executive Committee 2017-2021, and have been a co-chair of the ACM SIGCOMM CARES committee. I also contributed as a member of the steering committees of ACM CoNEXT and the PAM conference, and chairing the Advisory Board of the ACM PACM-NET journal.
I am fortunate to have supervised many bright students (and hope some new ones look for me in the future). Contact me if you are interested, but to be sure I am a good fit for you, please first read my recent papers and be ready to talk about the ones that interested you: it’s a proof-of-work without which you may not get a response :) If you are unaware of my work, I may not respond to your email.
Dr Vimal Kumar
Senior Lecturer
I studied Computer Science & Engineering at IP University in New Delhi before working for a couple of years with Computer Sciences Corporation in India. I moved to Missouri, US in 2008 for further study, where I worked on various problems surrounding secure data aggregation in sensor networks with Prof. Sanjay Madria. I received a PhD in Computer Science from the Missouri University of Science & Technology in 2014. My first academic position was with the University of West Florida in Pensacola after which I moved to University of Waikato in mid 2015, where I have been since, first as a Lecturer and then as a Senior Lecturer from 2020.
Dr Junaid Haseeb
Lecturer
My research mainly focus on capturing and analysing cyber attacks to understand their behavioural patterns and categorise attackers behind them. This includes working with cyber deception tools (Honeypots) and intrusion detection/prevention systems. I am also interested in applications of machine learning and formal methods.
Dr Farzana Zahid
Lecturer
Dr. Farzana Zahid's research focuses on the security of Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Cloud Computing, and AI-enabled systems. Her work focuses on the analysis, design, and development of novel lightweight active security solutions to address sophisticated cyber-attacks and strengthen the security, resilience, and reliability of critical digital infrastructures through innovative and practical cybersecurity approaches. Her research interests also include the security and trustworthiness of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Agentic AI, as well as the application of optimised machine learning techniques to enhance proactive cyber defence.
High School Category:
Tertiary Category:
Industry/Open Category:
Grand Prize Winner: Jamie McClymont and Thomas Hobson
Grand Runner-up: Michael Young and Aaron Rumpler
Round 1 Category Winners:
Round 2 Category Winners:
Round 2 Runner-up:
Side Challenge Top 3 Winners:
Grand Winners: Cale Budd, Josh Hogan, Sam Hogan
Grand Runner-up: Charlotte MacKenzie, Jamie McClymont
Round 1 & 2 Winners:
Secondary Category:Round 1 & 2 First Runner-up:
Secondary Category:Round 1 & 2 Second Runner-up:
Secondary Category:Challene Solvers
High School Special Prize
The 2022 NZ Cyber Security Challenge was held online with Round 0, Round 1 and 2 were on-campus.
Congratulations to the winners of Waikato x Cardiff round. The Waikato University winner is DoingGood. The Cardiff University winner is heartburn.
Grand Prize Winner, 1500 NZD : Covid_Brain
Round 1 Category Winner, 750 NZD
The 2021 NZ Cyber Security Challenge was held online with Round 0, Round 1 and 2 were on-campus.
Grand Prize Winner - Sponsored By Bhojraj Parmar: Rhys Davies
Round 2 Category Winner
Notice regarding NZCSC 2021: After the culmination of NZCSC'21 it was brought to our attention that some challenges were plagiarized from sources on the internet. The NZCSC organisers reported this to the employer of the person who created and submitted the challenges to be used in NZCSC. The employer took swift and strictest possible action for the misconduct. The NZCSC values integrity above everything else and the team was deeply saddened with the discovery. We apologise to all NZCSC'21 participants for this oversight and assure everyone that we have now put measures in place to ensure this does not happen again.
The 2020 NZ Cyber Security Challenge was held online with Round 0, Round 1 and a purple team challenge
all held online
Grand Winner: Jamie McClymont
Category Winners
Team 'The Password Inspectors' - Jamie McClymont, Rhys Davies.
Congratulations to all the Cyber Security Challenge competitors of 2019. This year, the challengers took on the Internet of Things with the focus on - forensics, reverse engineering, steganography, web-application security and cryptography.
Now UC Me (Joshua & Sam Hogan, University)
Thonking (Cameron Li & Jason Xu)
Arrays start at 1 (Ethyn Gillies & Marshall Patty)
Frozen Orange (Orion Edwards & Thilanka Priyankara)
Gradyhooker (Grady Hooker).
Team Elliptic Curveballs - Logan Krippner, Jacob Cheatley and Michael Jang.
Team Octocats - Jamie McClymont and Abigail Koay
Team UniHack - Rajat Rokhade, Debac Manikandan and Arnav Gogia
The NZ Cyber Security Challenge 2018 (NZCSC'18) hovered into action with a drone challenge for Round 1
& 2 contestants at the University of Waikato campus.
Challengers tested their hacking skills as they attempted to take charge of a drone controlled by a
host's smartphone and intercept photos taken by the drone's camera. Prizes were awarded to the
successful hackers.
NZCSC'18 action also included training sessions with some of the best, opportunities to kickstart a
cyber security career at the job fair and talks by some of the movers and shakers in the industry.
Round 0 online qualifying round took place from June 18-29, with the top 150 moving on to Rounds 1 and
2 on July 14 at the University.
2017 challenge known for Challenge Winner Repeat Performance .
It was a repeat performance by
the overall champions team Arcton, Nathaniel Watson, Jeremy Symon and Grady Hooker took out last
year's Challenge.
Representing industry, they walked away with a cheque for $2500 and
NetHui fellowships. Jeremy is currently doing a Masters of Computer Science at Waikato and working at
Gallagher, and Grady and Nathaniel are former Waikato Computer Science students now working in the
computer science industry.

Overall runners-up 418ShortAndStout - Michael Robertson and Brent Vollebregt - placed top in the
tertiary division and took home $1800.
Top performers in the high school division after Rounds 1 and 2, SQL Sharks twins Sam and Josh Hogan
also took out first place in the new Policy Round. Contestants were tested on responsible disclosures,
asked to critique a really badly-written cyber policy, and suggest incident response next steps for a
fictitious event.
The winning team from the industry division after Rounds 1 and 2 were Jack Haystead, Daniel Tebbutt
and Declan ter Veer-Burke. They took home a cheque for $1800.
NZCSC'17 hit all the right keys with VIPs from the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)
and INTERPOL attending. GCSB director Andrew Hampton told the Challengers it wasn't long ago that
people were saying cyber security should be on the agenda but now the agenda is cyber security.
Although, In this year's Challenge CROW collaborated with Japan's National Institute of
Communications and Information Technology ( NICT ) to up the ante in the visualisation of
the attack and defend networks of the competition. CROW member Cameron Brown worked with Koei Suzuki
to customise the NIRVANA Kai visualisation to show network traffic between the Round 3 servers. The
collaboration is mutually beneficial as NICT will utilise CROW technology in the future. NICT supply
the visualisations for Japan's largest cyber security competition SECCON.
Team Name: Hodor (462,250 points)
Team Members: Sjoerd de Feijter, Matthew Stringer, Vladimir Petko
Industry category team, representing Gallagher Group
Due to the popularity of the competition in 2015, we introduced an online qualifying round, Round
Zero. 267 participants registered for Round Zero and attempted the challenges between the 17 June -
1st July, after which the Top 150 were chosen to attend the competition on the 14 and 15 July.
Participants competed in two rounds: Round One, a capture-the-flag style challenge and Round Two, a
Red team vs. Blue team game where the Blue teams had to defend their vulnerable servers from attacks
from the Red teams, which consisted of an Industry Professional from Gallagher and two CROW members.
Team Name: Ter B
NZCSC'15 was open to all of New Zealand and participants were split into 3 categories: Secondary,
Tertiary, and Industry/Open.
The competition had 2 rounds: Round 1 was a capture-the-flag style challenge. Round 2, open to the top
5 teams of Round 1, was a Red team vs. Blue team style challenge where 5 Blue teams defended their
systems against the Red team, which included Industry professionals from Insomnia Security and PWC
Digital.
The first instalment of the Cyber Security Challenge was open to University of Waikato students only.
CSC'14 had a single round - a capture-the-flag style challenge where the students participants solved
challenges to acquire flags. The event served its purpose: to gauge students' interest in a Cyber
Security-themed competition. Over 70 students registered, attended the training and paticipated in the
competition, which encouraged the organisers to plan the next CSC.

