AMERICA’S TOP YOUNG SCIENTIST

HTTPS://WWW.YOUNGSCIENTISTLAB.COM/CHALLENGE

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision and Oversee and Govern

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills vary by individual challenge

A video competition in which students in grades 5-8 in the United States are asked 

to create a 1–2-minute video describing a unique solution to an everyday problem. 

Ten finalists are chosen to compete in the National Finals.

ÅNGSTROMCTF

HTTPS://2019.ANGSTROMCTF.COM/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration, programming, reverse 

engineering

A capture-the-flag (CTF) competition hosted and organized entirely by students at 

Montgomery Blair High School! CTF cybersecurity competitions have become an 

increasingly popular way for students to learn more about cybersecurity and 

develop and refine their hacking skills. These competitions are designed to educate 

and inspire high school students through interactive hacking challenges.

APPS 4 DIGITAL PEACE

HTTPS://CYBERTECHACCORD.ORG/CYBERSECURITY-TECH-ACCORDANNOUNCES-NEW-CONTEST-IN-PARTNERSHIP-WITH-THE-UN-OFFICEOF-DISARMAMENT-AFFAIRS/

NICE Alignment: Oversee and Govern

NICE Skills Alignment: Analyze, policy, legal, strategize 

Competition to stimulate new thinking from innovating young minds across the 

world. The goal of the competition is to develop original technology-based solutions, 

such as mobile applications, to both help limit the use of the internet as a domain of 

conflict, and to increase the stability of our online environment. Apps 4 Digital Peace 

is meant to complement the work of the United Nations in promoting an open, 

secure, stable, accessible and peaceful cyber environment through addressing 

existing and potential cyber threats, through
• Ensuring respect for international law in cyberspace,

• Ensuring respect for human rights in cyberspace,

• Adherence to voluntary norms, rules and principles,

• Fostering confidence building, and

• cybersecurity capacity building.

CONRAD CHALLENGE

HTTPS://WWW.CONRADCHALLENGE.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision and Oversee and Govern

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills vary by individual challenge

The Conrad Challenge is an annual, multi-phase innovation and entrepreneurship 

competition that encourages young adults to participate in designing the future. 

Each year, teams of 2-5 students, ages 13-18, from around the world create 

products and/or services to address some of the most pressing global and local 

challenges. They become entrepreneurial problem-solvers, addressing challenging 

social, scientific and societal issues through utilizing their creativity and criticalthinking skills. Participants work together to identify challenges and develop 

solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems in any of the following 

categories: Aerospace & Aviation, Cyber-Technology & Security, Energy & 

Environment, Health & Nutrition, Transforming Education Through Technology, 

Smoke-Free World: Eliminating & Reducing Teen Vaping, and Smoke-Free World: 

Re-purposed Farmlands & Tobacco Crops. Teams may submit in multiple 

categories, if desired.

CSAW CAPTURE THE FLAG (CTF)

HTTPS://WWW.CSAW.IO/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills vary by individual challenge

CSAW is the most comprehensive student-run cyber security event in the world, 

featuring 9 hacking competitions, workshops, and industry events. Final events are 

hosted by 6 global academic centers.
CYBER 9/12 STRATEGY CHALLENGE 

HTTPS://WWW.ATLANTICCOUNCIL.ORG/PROGRAMS/SCOWCROFTCENTER-FOR-STRATEGY-AND-SECURITY/CYBER-STATECRAFTINITIATIVE/CYBER-912/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Oversee and Govern

NICE Skills Alignment: Analyze, investigate, policy, legal, strategize

The Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is an annual cyber policy and strategy competition 

where students from across the globe compete in developing policy recommendations 

tackling a fictional cyber catastrophe.

CYBERPATRIOT

HTTPS://WWW.USCYBERPATRIOT.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration

CyberPatriot is a program established for the K-12 education of students in cyber 

security by the Air Force Association. There are three branches of the program, including 

the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, AFA CyberCamps, and Elementary 

School Cyber Education Initiative. The Cyber Defense Competition starts at the state and 

then regional level. Top competitors are then given an all-expense paid trip to the 

national finals. At nationals, participants compete for national recognition and 

scholarship money.

ECYBERMISSION

HTTPS://WWW.ECYBERMISSION.COM/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration, programming, reverse 

engineering

eCYBERMISSION is a web-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 

(STEM) competition for students in grades six through nine. Students are challenges to 
explore how STEM works in their world while working as a team to solve problems in 

their community. Teams compete virtually in state and regional competitions and inperson through the National Judging & Educational Event (NJ&EE). Student prizes are 

awarded at the state, regional, and national levels by grade level. Three mission areas 

National Security & Safety, Robotics, and Technology connect with cybersecurity.

EXPLORAVISION

HTTPS://WWW.EXPLORAVISION.ORG/WHAT-EXPLORAVISION

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision and Oversee and Govern

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills vary by individual challenge

Participants engage in real-world problem solving, rooted in STEM. The challenge is 

to look 20 years into the future and communicate a new future technology. 

HIGH SCHOOL CAPTURE THE FLAG (HSCTF)

HTTPS://HSCTF.COM/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration, programming, reverse 

engineering

HSCTF ("High School Capture the Flag") is the first CTF designed by high schoolers for 

high schoolers. Unlike other CTFs, HSCTF isn't purely about computer security. It extends 

the CTF model of competition to other areas of computer science such as the design 

and analysis of algorithms and programming languages. Each challenge will still have a 

flag, and most of our challenges will fall into the traditional CTF categories of 

cryptography, reverse engineering, programming languages, forensics, and recon.

Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions are traditionally targeted at college students or 

industry professionals. HSCTF is a CTF designed for younger students who might be 

interested in computer science.
HONEYNET PROJECT CHALLENGES

HTTPS://WWW.HONEYNET.ORG/CHALLENGES

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain 

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills vary by individual challenge

Challenges give students the opportunity to analyze attacks and share their findings. 

Individuals and organizations learn about threats, and how to learn and analyze them. 

Even better, individuals can see the write-ups from other individuals, learning new tools 

and technique for analyzing attacks. A sample solution is posted at the end of each 

challenge. Submissions received are judged by our members and the top three 

submissions are recognized and awarded with small prizes.

JUNIOR SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES SYMPOSIA (JSHS)

HTTPS://WWW.JSHS.ORG/ABOUT-JSHS/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision and Oversee and Govern

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills vary by individual challenge

The Junior Science and Humanities Symposia (JSHS) Program is a tri-service – U.S. Army, 

Navy, and Air Force – sponsored STEM competition which promotes original research 

and experimentation in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) 

at the high school level and publicly recognizes students for outstanding achievement. 

By connecting talented students, their teachers, and research professionals at affiliated 

symposia and by rewarding research excellence, JSHS aims to widen the pool of trained 

talent prepared to conduct research and development vital to our nation. Several 

categories connect with cybersecurity.

KRYPTOS CHALLENGE

HTTPS://WWW.CWU.EDU/MATH/KRYPTOS

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate

NICE Skills Alignment: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, 

cryptography, networking
κρυπτοσ or kryptos, is a contest open to undergraduate and high school students. The 

theme of the contest is centered around the breaking, or cryptanalysis, of ciphers (secret 

writing). Each challenge presents contestants with a brief scenario together with some 

ciphertext (encoded message). The goal is to discover the original English plaintext 

message! Clues to help break the cipher may be contained in the actual ciphertext or in 

the details of the accompanying scenario. While it is not the intent of this contest to test 

overly technical aspects of cryptanalysis or advanced mathematical algorithms, some 

familiarity with basic codemaking and codebreaking is certainly helpful.

MITRE CYBER ACADEMY

HTTPS://MITRECYBERACADEMY.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Analyze and Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: Steganography, software exploitation, computer forensics, 

cryptography, networking 

MITRE presents an annual STEM Capture the Flag challenge that is open to both current 

students and professionals. While current professionals may compete in the competition 

for education and training purposes, only eligible high school and college teams are

able to obtain winning prizes, scholarships, and internships. 

NATIONAL CYBER LEAGUE (NCL)

HTTPS://NATIONALCYBERLEAGUE.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration

The National Cyber League (NCL) is the most inclusive, performance-based, learningcentered collegiate cybersecurity competition today! The NCL, powered by Cyber 

Skyline, enables students to prepare and test themselves against practical cybersecurity 

challenges that they will likely face in the workforce, such as identifying hackers from 
forensic data, pentesting and audit vulnerable websites, recovering from ransomware 

attacks, and much more! Open to U.S. high school and college students, the NCL is a 

community and virtual training ground that allow students to develop and demonstrate 

their technical cybersecurity skills, helping students bridge the gap from curriculum to 

career!

NORTH AMERICAN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS OPEN COMPETITION

HTTPS://WWW.NACLOWEB.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate

NICE Skills Alignment: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, 

cryptography, networking

NACLO is a contest in which high-school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving 

these puzzles, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while 

exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is 

necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics and language 

technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent 

cutting edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study 

and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience 

a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.

NSA CODEBREAKER CHALLENGE

HTTPS://CODEBREAKER.LTSNET.NET/CHALLENGE

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate

NICE Skills Alignment: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, 

cryptography, networking

The NSA Codebreaker Challenge provides students with a hands-on opportunity to 

develop their reverse-engineering / low-level code analysis skills while working on a 

realistic problem set centered around the NSA's mission.

ONLINE OLYMPIAD IN LINGUISTICS

HTTPS://ONLING.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate
NICE Skills Alignment: Encryption algorithms and stenography, digital forensics, 

cryptography, networking

The Online Olympiad in Linguistics was conceived as an annual competition that would 

allow secondary school students from all over the world to get closer to understanding 

the scientific beauty of language. It can also serve as practice before the

(offline) International Linguistics Olympiad, which takes place every summer and brings 

together students from many countries. Unlike the IOL, however, the Online Olympiad 

is well suited for problems that involve real-time interaction and feature multimedia 

materials.

PACTF

HTTPS://2019.PACTF.COM/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration

PACTF includes two rounds, each one week-long. During each round, you can pick any 

two-day span to grab as many flags as you can! Choose wisely: Once your two days run 

out, you won’t be able to score more points in that round. Don’t worry about being too 

slow, though! Even if your two-day timer is over, you can still test your skills against 

problems in previous rounds. There are scoreboards for each individual round, and there 

is an overall all-time scoreboard.

PITCOCTF

HTTPS://PICOCTF.COM/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration

picoCTF is a free computer security game targeted at middle and high school students, 

created by security experts at Carnegie Mellon University. The game consists of a series 

of challenges centered around a unique storyline where participants must reverse 

engineer, break, hack, decrypt, or do whatever it takes to solve the challenge.
REDPWN CTF

HTTPS://CTF.REDPWN.NET/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration, reverse engineering, 

cryptography

redpwnCTF is a cybersecurity competition hosted by the redpwn CTF team. It’s online, 

jeopardy-style, and includes a wide variety of computer science and cybersecurity 

challenges. Compete in challenge categories such as binary exploitation, reverse 

engineering, cryptography, and web to earn points. 

REGENERON SCIENCE TALENT SEARCH (STS)

HTTPS://WWW.SOCIETYFORSCIENCE.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Dependent upon research area

NICE Skills Alignment: Dependent upon research area

The nation’s oldest and most prestigious science competition. Entrants to this 

competition must conduct an original research project and supplement their 

applications with recommendation letters and transcripts.13 alumni have won the 

Nobel Prize. Forty finalists are selected and receive an all-expenses-paid trip to 

Washington, D.C. for in-depth judging.

SANS ACES

HTTPS://WWW.CYBERACES.ORG

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain

NICE Skills Alignment: Networking, operating systems, system administration

SANS Cyber Aces Online is online content that teaches the core concepts needed to 

assess and protect information security systems. Content was developed by SANS, and 

includes an engaging, self-paced, easy to use combination of tutorial and videos. It’s 

available as open courseware so you can take it anytime. For each of modules, 
competitors will participate in a national competition by taking an on-line multiplechoice quiz.

SANS NETWARS

HTTPS://WWW.SANS.ORG/NETWARS

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision and Operate and Maintain

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills range by individual competitions

The SANS Institute offers a series of challenge types through their NetWars modules. 

These challenges are available for a wide variety of skill levels, and even feature a 

miniaturized physical city over which challenge participants can attempt to compete for 

the cyber resources. A wide range of competitions are available throughout the year in 

locations around the world.

TJCTF

HTTPS://TJCTF.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Operate and Maintain & Protect and Defend

NICE Skills Alignment: System and network administration

TJCTF is a Capture the Flag (CTF) competition hosted by TJHSST's Computer Security 

Club. It is an online, jeopardy-style competition targeted at high schoolers interested in 

Computer Science and Cybersecurity. Participants may compete on a team of up to 5 

people and will solve problems in categories such as Binary Exploitation, Reverse 

Engineering, Web Exploitation, Forensics, and Cryptography in order to gain points.

U.S.A MATHEMATICAL TALENT SEARCH (USAMTS)

HTTP://WWW.USAMTS.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision & Investigate

NICE Skills Alignment: Encryption algorithms, digital forensics, cryptography, 

networking
A monthly online mathematics competition where students are given one math 

problem to solve. Because of the level of difficulty, students (middle and high 

school) have the remainder of the month to work out solutions. Students' solutions 

are graded by mathematicians, and comments are returned to the students to 

develop their problem-solving skills and writing abilities. Participants are eligible for 

various prizes, such as books and software throughout the year. Additionally, the 

top scorers are invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination 

(AIME), a process necessary for applying to the USA Mathematical Olympiad Team.

The USAMTS is primarily sponsored by the National Security Agency.

U.S. CYBER CHALLENGE / CYBER QUESTS

HTTPS://WWW.USCYBERCHALLENGE.ORG/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision, Oversight & Development

NICE Skills Alignment: Skills range by individual competitions

Cyber Quests are a series of fun but challenging on-line competitions allowing 

participants to demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of information security realms. 

Each quest features an artifact for analysis, along with a series of quiz questions. Some 

quests focus on a potentially vulnerable sample web server as the artifact, challenging 

participants to identify its flaws using vulnerability analysis skills. Other quests are 

focused around forensic analysis, packet capture analysis, and more. The quests have 

varying levels of difficulty and complexity, with some quests geared toward beginners, 

while others include more intermediate and ultimately advanced material.

ZERO ROBOTICS TOURNAMENT

HTTP://ZEROROBOTICS.MIT.EDU/TOURNAMENTS/

NICE Alignment: Securely Provision

NICE Skills Alignment: Programming, debugging, testing and validation

An international programming competition where students must program satellites to 

complete certain objectives (such as avoid obstacles, collect objects, etc.) while 

preserving resources such as fuel. The competition is provided through a partnership 

with MIT and NASA. The competition culminates in the finals where winning teams’ 
satellites compete aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Students watch via a live 

feed from the ISS while NASA astronauts provide commentary.