The Minister of Education, Jokin Bildarratz, together with the Deputy Minister of Vocational Education, Jorge Arévalo, participated in the opening ceremony of the final of CyberLehia (cybersecurity competition for Vocational Education students in the Basque Country) on May 9. The final of that first edition was held at the La Terminal site in Zorrozaur, as part of a dissemination conference organized by the Department of Education on cyber security. Five teams competed, each of them consisting of three Vocational Education students. Together with the head of the department, Javier Dieguez, director general of the Basque Agency for Cybersecurity (Cyberzaintza), also participated at the beginning of the conference.

The conference brought together around 200 people in the La Terminal space, mostly Vocational Education students studying cyber security (in addition to the competitors), teachers or managers of companies and organizations in that sector.

Attack and defense

After the institutional opening ceremony and after the necessary technical checks of the equipment that the students had to use to compete, the competition started. Each team (three members of the team participated) was given the necessary equipment and infrastructure, with the same technical characteristics in all cases.

The competition was developed in a challenge modality called CTF (CFT, English acronym for Capture The Flag, Arrapatu bandera in Basque). The goal of each team was to capture the opponents' flag or code, as this confirmed that the challenge had been successfully completed. Each piece of equipment had a vulnerable server or network of equipment that it had to protect while trying to gain access to the opposing equipment (under attack). That is, they had a double objective: they had to attack the infrastructure of the opposing teams and, at the same time, they had to defend their own from the attacks of the opponents. In this way, the students put their knowledge and skills in the fields of cyber security and hacking to the test. In this challenge, points were accumulated for attacks achieved, as well as for effective defense (attacks neutralized).

All the teams that participated in the finals of the CyberCompetition were made up of students studying specialization courses in Vocational Education. Four of the teams were studying Cybersecurity in information technology environments, while the fifth was studying Cybersecurity in operational technology environments.

List of finalist teams and schools:

z C0ok1e_monst3r. Tartanga LHII (Erandio).

z TempleOS 2.0. Marists Durango LHIPI (Durango).

z WE HAVE Izarraitz LHII (Azkoitia).

z TortugaGuard. Marists Durango LHIPI (Durango).

z Freewall. Andra Mari LII (Galdakao).

Dissemination conference

Along with the competition, the conference was completed with dissemination activities about cyber security, including workshops, lectures or technical sessions. In the same way, the companies of the sector also participated, thanks to the cooperation with Cyberzaintza (the Basque Agency for Cybersecurity) and Cyberbasque (the cluster of cyber security companies in the Basque Country).

The objectives of the CyberLehia and the conference held in Bilbao were as follows:

z Highlighting students' motivation, using a gamified competition for this purpose.

z To attract talent to the cyber security sector, actively encouraging the participation of women.

z Expanding knowledge and awareness about cyber security, through advanced technical training.

z To show the work done by Vocational Education regarding cyber security.

z Promote networking between cyber security companies, Vocational Education schools and students, to enable collaboration and talent attraction.

In three phases

In this first edition of the CyberLehia, more than 280 students from 25 Vocational Education schools in the Basque Country took part, in all phases. In all cases, they were students from higher education cycles or specialization courses, students from the IT and Communications and Electricity and Electronics professional fields.

The first phase of the competition was played online in March. The students, who participated in groups of up to three members, were offered 15 challenges in different categories, which they had to solve within a week. The top 33 teams advanced to the next stage, also online, in April. The five teams that obtained the best score in the second phase played the final of this first edition of CyberLehia on the 9th of the month.