Achievements

The 25 strongest teams in the world advanced to the final round of Midnight Flag CTF 2026, held on June 13, 2026, at ESNA’s Ker Lann campus in Bruz (Brittany, France).

DTU’s IRESDTU team competing at Midnight Flag CTF 2026 in France

Top five overall

Under the guidance of MSc Nguyen Nhat Hoang, a lecturer at the Duy Tan University (DTU) School of Computer Science & AI (SCA), the IRESDTU team - consisting of four DTU students - was among the 25 strongest teams. They outstandingly finished fifth overall and second among student teams.

Midnight Flag CTF 2026 was an international information-security competition organized by ESNA (Brittany, France). It attracted 756 teams from many countries around the world, including France, Sweden, South Korea, Japan, Palestine, and Vietnam.

The competition was a prestigious academic arena where teams from universities, research institutes, and technology companies worldwide could compete and demonstrate their technical expertise and practical problem-solving skills in information security.

Participants had to pass a wide range of challenges in many specialized cybersecurity disciplines:

-    web exploitation,
-    cryptography,
-    pwn/binary exploitation,
-    reverse engineering,
-    forensics, and
-    OSINT.

These challenges tested their knowledge, analytical thinking, and ability to tackle complex cybersecurity scenarios.

Top five at Midnight Flag CTF 2026

“What made this year’s competition different from previous information-security contests was the introduction of hardware security,” Chu The Anh, one of the four students, explains. “We had to interact directly with real hardware devices for this. As soon as the competition began, we immediately adopted a divide-and-conquer strategy. “Each of us focused on solving those challenges that matched our areas of expertise to maximize our efficiency. We completed the easier and intermediate challenges quickly to build up points and lay a foundation for the acceleration phases later on.”

Le Khac Huy, another student, adds that, “The challenges always became more difficult, and we had to remain highly focused from start to finish. In addition, the dynamic scoring system continuously adjusted the point value of each challenge based on how many teams had solved it, causing the leaderboard to shift constantly and keeping the competition intense until the very last minutes.

“Despite the pressure, we in the IRESDTU team stayed calm and capitalized on each member’s strengths - from researching algorithms and developing custom exploitation tools to testing and optimizing solutions.

“Thanks to our team spirit and high focus, we steadily improved our standing, closed the gap with the leading teams, and ultimately secured a high position on the final leaderboard.”

A notable feature of this year’s final round was that the organizers prohibited the use of AI and any similar assistance tools during the competition. The teams therefore had to rely entirely on their own technical knowledge, research skills, and analytical thinking to solve the challenges.

DTU’s IRESDTU team competing with confidence at Midnight Flag CTF 2026 in France

“When the competition entered its final minutes and the leaderboard was officially frozen, the pressure became even more suffocating,” Nguyen Ba Khanh, another of the students, recalled the high focus during the contest. “We could no longer see our exact rankings and we could but stay completely focused on the remaining challenges.

“At that critical moment, IRESDTU successfully solved a difficult Android APK reverse-engineering challenge. It was worth a high number of points and played a decisive role in securing our final ranking.”

The Open Lab model provides optimal support for students studying Cybersecurity at DTU

Learning in a well-invested environment

“One of the factors behind this achievement was the opportunity to study in an environment with significant investment in modern cybersecurity labs,” Vo Tuan Anh, another one of the students, says. “These facilities allow us, students, to gain hands-on experience early, complemented by the unwavering support of our lecturers in Network Engineering & Cybersecurity.”

In the final standings, DTU’s IRESDTU team stands alongside strong teams from France, Jordan, and South Korea, while also earning an impressive second place in the student division.

“The Midnight Flag CTF 2026 final is a highly technical and fiercely competitive international cybersecurity competition,” says MSc Nguyen Nhat Hoang, lecturer at the DTU School of Computer Science & AI. “Entering the final round and achieving this impressive result demonstrates the capability, spirit, and international competitiveness of DTU students.

“This achievement not only highlights the technical expertise, problem-solving abilities, and commitment to learning of DTU students, but also reflects the university’s effectiveness in research and education, and its attention to and investment in cybersecurity.”

(Media Center)