picoCTF is the largest cybersecurity hacking contest for middle and high school students, created by security experts at Carnegie Mellon University.
In this contest, participants need to overcome a set of challenges from six domains of cybersecurity including general skills, cryptography, web exploitation, forensics, etc. The challenges are all set up with the intent of being hacked, making it an excellent, legal way to get hands-on experience.
Our history
Our Research
Research Vision
Big Learning, Small Challenges
If we cannot make learning cybersecurity easy, then we will make it fun.
Past Papers
- pico-Boo!: How to avoid scaring students away in a CTF competition (2019)
- Automatic Problem Generation for Capture-the-Flag Competitions (2015)
- picoCTF: A Game-Based Computer Security Competition for High School Students (2014)
- picoCTF: Teaching 10,000 High School Students to Hack (2013)
- picoCTF 2013 - Toaster Wars: When interactive storytelling game meets the largest computer security competition (2013)
