ECHO · Nationals
UND CyberHawks National CTF · FinalsQualified for Nationals
ECHO is going to the in-person Finals. The club full-cleared the virtual qualifiers — ten flags out of ten — and earned a seat at the championship round, held October 26 at the University of North Dakota, as part of the IEEE Cyber Awareness & Research Symposium.
Qualifiers ran September 12 on the Hack The Box platform — a fifteen-hour ranked jeopardy, officially AI-assisted, run by UND’s Center for Cyber Security Research. ECHO cleared every category: web, crypto, reversing, forensics, hardware, ICS and AI/ML.
ECHO · The roster
Who is competing
Teams are up to four players. ECHO is fielding a full four, travelling with a mentor.
ECHO · What the berth includes
Covered, and not covered
- CoveredHotel — competing players. Complimentary rooms for in-person finalists, provided by C2SR at UND. Booking runs through the organisers’ hotel allocation form.
- CoveredConference registration for the team, including access to the symposium’s sessions.
- CoveredA finalist workshop seat. In-person finalists get a free seat in the Fortinet “Attack & Defense Methodologies” workshop or the Rust Foundational workshop, plus a federated-learning workshop run by Flower Labs.
- Not coveredThe mentor’s hotel. Rooms are for competing finalists. The mentor travels with the team, but their lodging is arranged and paid separately — plan for it.
- Plan for itTravel to Grand Forks. Getting there from Colorado is the team’s own arrangement. See below.
Finalists also get on-stage recognition, team photos, certificates, and direct time with mentors, recruiters and faculty — which is most of the reason to be in the room rather than online.
ECHO · The event
Where and when
| Finals | October 26, 2026 · 1:30–4:30 PM |
|---|---|
| Venue | Small Henry Ballroom, UND Memorial Union 2901 University Ave, Grand Forks, ND 58202 |
| Format | Jeopardy-style, in person. Teams of up to four. Points by difficulty and accuracy, a bonus for solving quickly, ties broken on submission time. |
| Categories | Web exploitation, cryptography, digital forensics, reverse engineering, binary exploitation, and miscellaneous (OSINT, steganography, scripting). |
| Host | The Center for Cyber Security Research (C2SR), College of Engineering & Mines, University of North Dakota. |
| Symposium | The 6th IEEE Cyber Awareness & Research Symposium (CARS 2026), October 26–28 — in person and hybrid on the 26th and 27th, fully online on the 28th. An NSA CAE-R conference. |
Prizes
| Place (university category) | Prize |
|---|---|
| 1st | $1,000 |
| 2nd | $700 |
| 3rd | $500 |
Up to $10,000 in total prizes across all categories. Sponsors add digital badges and certificates through Credly, and platform vouchers through SkillBit.
ECHO · Getting there
Colorado to Grand Forks
This is a real trip, not a drive across town. Fort Collins to Grand Forks is roughly 900 miles. The practical options are flying into Grand Forks International (GFK), usually connecting through Minneapolis–St. Paul, or driving it over two days. Free visitor parking is available in Lot 5 next to the Memorial Union.
Specific flights, dates and who books what are being worked out with the team and are not published here. Roster members: those details live in the team channel.
ECHO · The road here
How the seat was earned
217 teams entered the virtual qualifiers. ECHO solved all ten challenges, placed 34th, and finished inside the field invited to compete in person. The full clear is the part worth keeping: every category, no gaps.
Three of the qualifier challenges are written up for anyone who wants to learn the method rather than the answer — a malicious macro read statically, an industrial protocol whose encryption was never the weak link, and a Go binary built to defeat reverse engineering that gave up its secret at runtime.
ECHO · Ethical Cybersecurity Hackers Ops
Front Range Community College
ECHO is FRCC’s student cybersecurity club. If you want to compete, the roster opens for every event — no experience required, and the club will teach you the rest.