The first participants of PHDays CTF 2012 have been decided!

The qualifying stage of the international competition for the protection of information, PHDays CTF Quals, has been completed. Over a period of two days, 72 teams from 17 countries fought unremittingly for the right to reach the final and to attend the main competition in May 2012.

The most active were Russian hackers, who were in the majority of the contestant teams.They were followed by the United States and France. The competition was also attended by experts from such countries as Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Tunisia, Germany, Switzerland, Kenya, Canada, Peru, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Lebanon, Australia and Spain. First place in the CTF Quals was the team rdot.org from St. Petersburg, who maintained a leading position throughout the game.

The contest for second and third place was between eindbazen of the Netherlands and leetmore of St. Petersburg. Several times the teams changed places and the tension was unrelenting to the very end of the competition, when in the last half hour a winner emerged -the Dutch hackers just four points ahead of leetmore.

The remaining teams in the top five were int3pids from Spain (4th) and Russian HackerDom (5th place). For the first half of the game the Spanish team was seriously lagging behind the leaders, but then was able to solve a series of complex tasks and have a high score at the finish. This late breakthrough determined their fate - int3pids and HackerDom joined the rest of the winners.

The fifth place was also seriously contended by 0daysober from France, trailing HackerDom by just half a point in the last-minute struggle. Nevertheless, we are showing out appreciation for the activity and perseverance of 0daysober by inviting them to the main competition in 2012!

We would like to mention Antichat Team, [censored], ufologist, Shine (Russia), Big-daddy, ensib (France), MachoMan (South Korea), Nullarea Tunisian Team (Tunisia) and takeshix (Germany), which, although they won no prizes, steadfastly fought for victory and helped make the game dynamic and exciting.

We would like to remind you that PHDyas CTF Quals affects different areas of information security: assessment of security, search for and exploitation of weak points, reverse engineering, etc. In the qualifying stage, the gaming infrastructure PHDyas CTF 2011 was much used, as many of the participants' tasks in this face-to-face competition were not solved.

Dmitrii Evteev, PHDays CTF Overlord: "I would like to thank everyone who participated in CTF Quals, - the competition became really nail-biting and exciting. However, the winners of the CTF Quals are not the only main participants in CTF. A number of team leaders of Russian and international ranking are invited hors concours. So, all in all, the full-time competition will involve 12 teams."

The main competition, PHDAYS CTF, will be held in Moscow on May 30-31, 2012.

View the full rating qualifying events here: http://phdays.ru/ctf/quals/rating/.

Stay tuned!