Double Success for Cybersecurity Team Ireland Captain Cillian Collins

2024 has been a remarkable year for the Irish CTF, Capture the Flag, team, and doubly so for team Captain Cillian Collins. Fresh from leading the team to their highest ever finish in ENISA’s European Cybersecurity Challenge, Collins became the first Irish player selected for Team Europe and was a leading figure in that team as they won the International Cybersecurity Challenge CTF this week in Santiago, Chile.

The win was Team Europe’s third in a row, facing challenges from teams representing Asia, Oceania, USA, Africa, Latin America and Canada, across two days of challenges. The team became the first to win each individual day of competition as well as the overall prize.

The win came less than three weeks after Collins captained the Irish team to their highest finish of 16th at the European Cybersecurity Challenge in Turin, Italy, where the Irish competed against 31 teams from Europe plus six guest countries including the US, Singapore, Canada and Costa Rica. 16th place was a jump of nine places in 2023, by a team run by volunteers and one one of the smallest budgets in the competition, and represents huge progress by the team under manager Mark Lane and head coaches Emmet Leahy and Daniel Cahill, themselves both former Team Ireland captains.

It’s also been a remarkable personal journey for Collins who only started playing CTFs in 2021, “I was first introduced to CTFs when qualifying for the Irish team competing at ECSC Prague in 2021. After this I competed at ZeroDays CTF in Dublin where I won the Colleges category with my team in both 2022 and 2023,” said Collins.

“I’ve been involved in the Irish team ever since and was nominated by Mark Lane for Team Europe this year. After an intense selection process I was chosen to compete in Chile at the ICC where we competed against teams from North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America – finishing in 1st place!”.

The improvement in the team has been marked this year. When asked what’s behind the advances Collins explained that the knowledge sharing from more experienced players has helped accelerate the learning of newer players “We now have former players such as Daniel Cahill and Emmet Leahy who are team coaches and share what they have learned from past competitions.”

“Mark Lane has been instrumental in organising the team and putting together regular bootcamps at TU Dublin campus where the team have worked together in preparation for these competitions. And that hard work has paid off. It has been incredibly rewarding to see Ireland so high on the leaderboard! We had the largest improvement of any ECSC team this year and it is a testament to the hard work and dedication of players and coaches.”

Team manager Mark Lane was glowing in his praise of his team captain “Cillian has come on an incredible distance in the three years since he joined the team. His drive and desire to learn have been great to watch, and it’s so rewarding to see his continued development as a player and as captain. I’d no hesitation nominating him to Team Europe and I wasn’t surprised to see him becoming the first Irish player to be chosen.

“He still has so much potential, and I could see him as a future captain of the European team. His engagement in the training with Team Europe has also been hugely beneficial to the Irish team as Cillian brings all that learning and experience back to our team as a coach,” said Lane.

Collins also speaks very highly of his experiences with Team Europe “It is a great honour to be able to play alongside such talented people. I learned a huge amount from being a part of the team and feel motivated to continue learning. The ICC this year was very competitive with some extremely strong players on the other teams so we were very pleased to come out on top.”

It’s clear from both Collins and Lane that there is so much potential in the Irish CTF scene, and the future is bright, once the support is in place. Collins said “I think the CTF scene continues to grow and there are so many talented young people in the country now. I hope there will be even more opportunities for them to learn and develop their skills.”

“Support for this project has grown in recent months but we still feel there is more work to be done and more support from government and third level institutions is key to finding new talent and supporting their development. We will be competing at the ECSC next year in Poland and will be looking to improve on this recent result!”