Capture-the-flag competitions, cyber camps, and security training for students who want to break and defend systems.
Programs in this collection (5)
picoCTF (CyLab Security Academy): Carnegie Mellon. Competition, Worldwide. Carnegie Mellon's free capture-the-flag program where players solve jeopardy-style puzzles by reverse engineering, hacking, and decrypting to find hidden flags. Teams of up to five enter the annual competition, and picoGym practice is open year-round.
CyberPatriot: Air & Space Forces Association. Competition, USA. Teams of two to six students with a registered adult coach get virtual operating systems and must find and fix security weaknesses while keeping critical services running. After online rounds, top teams earn all-expenses-paid trips to the National Finals in Maryland.
Beaver Works Summer Institute: MIT Lincoln Lab. Summer Program, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Four-week summer STEM program at MIT for rising high school seniors living in the U.S., with project courses in areas such as autonomous systems, programming, microelectronics and cybersecurity. Students take an online course before applying. Free for families under $200,000; others pay $3,000.
Microsoft Discovery Program: Microsoft. Internship, Redmond, Washington, USA. A four-week paid summer internship at Microsoft for graduating high school seniors heading into a bachelor's program. Interns work full-time and onsite in Redmond, Washington or Atlanta, Georgia, on projects with mentorship from Microsoft employees between July and August. Applicants must live and attend high school within 50 miles of Redmond or around Atlanta and must have completed pre-calculus, an equivalent course, or 3 consecutive years of math including senior year.
NASA Space Apps Challenge: NASA. Competition, Worldwide. Participants of all ages, alone or in teams, spend a weekend using NASA's open data to tackle challenges written by NASA experts, at local in-person or virtual events. It is free to join, and anyone under 18 must be registered by a parent or guardian who stays with them during the event.