The Novosibirsk State University team 地 松鼠 .PAS took sixth place in the qualifying stage of the CTFZone international competition organized by the Russian company BI.ZONE. BI.ZONE develops cybersecurity solutions. 1,075 teams registered for the qualifying round that took place at the beginning of December. Only 138 of them were able to solve at least one problem. 地 松鼠 .PAS was third among Russian teams.
NSU Team member and first-year postgraduate student at the Information Technology Department (ITD) Alexander Tkachev described the competition,
The main difference about this competition is that it is not a student competition, it is organized by professionals from BI.Zone. The high level of competition is also demonstrated by the fact that CFTZone winners are invited to the DEF CON, the largest hacker conference in the United States. Few competitions can boast about that.
In addition to Tkachev, the 地 松鼠 .PAS team included Roman Lebedev (1st year postgraduate student at ITD), Vladimir Sitnov, Dmitry Lipovy (2nd year at the ITD MA students), and Dmitry Permyashkin (1st year ITD MA student). The team may have some changes for the final stage that takes place in April 2020. In 2017, NSU students took third place in the CTFZone finals.