In 2025 I had the honor of representing Team Albania at ESCS (European Student Cyber Security competition).
🔐 The Challenges
We faced:
- Web exploitation & XSS/SQLi
- Binary exploitation & reverse engineering
- Network analysis & packet inspection
- Crypto puzzles & CTF-style tasks
Example: a tricky crypto challenge required reconstructing a custom stream cipher output. Our team combined Python scripting with quick mental math to break it under time pressure.
💡 Teamwork
- 4 members, each specializing in different domains (web, binary, crypto, networking)
- Shared live notes and problem-solving pipelines
- Daily scrimmages before the main event
🏆 Outcome
- Finished Top 10 teams in Europe
- Learned techniques and strategies that go beyond textbooks — real-world incident response style thinking
This was my first time at ESCS, and it was intense but incredibly rewarding.