Computing Student Wins at Government Flagship Cyber Discovery Programme

15-year-old Oliver Fogelin, a Computer Science GCSE student at Churcher’s College, has successfully won the Capture the Flag (CTF) challenge at the Government-backed Cyber Discovery 2019 event in London.   Cyber Discovery was launched in 2018 as the flagship cyber security training programme aiming to introduce cyber security as a profession to more young people.

From almost 25,000 thousand participants overall, just 170 of the top performing and highest scoring students across the UK were invited to join Cyber Discovery Camps.  Oliver attended the third and final camp alongside 57 other students in live, hands-on competitions such as hacking a robot arm, hacking their name badge, cryptography puzzles and listening to talks from industry professionals on the importance of cyber security as a career option.

On the final day, a tense Capture the Flag (CTF) challenge was the pinnacle of their Cyber Discovery journey.  The CTF event saw the contestants bring together all the skills learnt in previous stages of the programme to attack systems against the clock.  Students encountered web attacks, digital forensics, cryptography and binary exploitation during the CTF, learning and testing skills needed in real-life cyber security expert’s job.

Oliver said:

I’m really pleased how well it went at the Cyber Discovery event.  Not only winning first place in the CTF challenge but I also got a bunch of contacts for work experience.   I hope to be invited again next year!

Simon Williams, Headmaster at Churcher’s College, said:

We aim to prepare students for life beyond Churcher’s.  The Cyber Discovery Programme is a brilliant experience for students to be exposed to real world challenges that impact businesses every day.  They are tasked with thwarting the tactics cyber criminals routinely use against individuals and organisations around the world.  Congratulations to Oliver on this impressive achievement!