Lühack25: IT security competition inspires students in Lübeck!

Lühack25: IT security competition inspires students in Lübeck!

The competition will take place on February 28th and March 1st, 2025Lühack25, an extraordinary oneCapture the Flag Contest, instead of. This event will take place both on siteTransitional houseoffered in Lübeck as well as online. Lühack25 is organized by Institute for IT Security and the “Capture the Flag” team from the University of Lübeck. Registration for online participation is already open and can be done via the website luehack.sshuzl.de take place. The public viewing is open to those interested without registering.

The event is mainly aimed at students from the 10th grade and covers various areas such as web development, reverse engineering, binary exploitation and cryptography. The teams can consist of up to 10 people and all tasks are offered at different levels of difficulty. Lühack was launched in 2022 to make the importance of IT security tangible and to provide mandatory support for the newly introduced compulsory subject of computer science in Schleswig-Holstein.

A format for schools

In the past, 15 schools from Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania took part in the first face-to-face event of the Lühack competition. In the of Thore Tiemann, M.Sc., event is intended to get teachers to know modern teaching formats and to get students excited about the subject of computer science. Tiemann recently spoke in a Ministry of Education podcast in which he illustrated the relevance of such competitions and their impact on the education of young people.

The aim of the Lühack competition is to sustainably promote the skills of the participants and to experience practical handling of IT security. Various winning teams have been crowned in recent years, such as Ctrl+Alt+Elite, which took first place in 2024, or the groups that were successful in the previous competitions in 2023 and 2022.

The relevance of cybersecurity

Participation in such competitions is particularly important as cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, such as energy and water supplies in Germany, continue to increase. As in an article from Fraunhofer Institute It has been established that practical training is necessary to prepare employees efficiently for these challenges. The Cybersecurity Learning Lab offers programs that are inspired by gamification and simulate real work environments.

In these practical training sessions, participants can take on the roles of attackers and defenders and thus experience first-hand what measures are necessary for security checks and defense. Such integrative learning approaches are intended not only to expand specialist knowledge, but also to increase the willingness to learn independently.