Andrian (Andrian Lloyd Maagma)
1st Runner-Up
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CTF
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Hack4Gov

Cryptography Reverse Engineering Network Security Web Security Digital Forensics OSINT
Table of Contents

About the competition

Hack4Gov is the national Capture-The-Flag (CTF) cybersecurity competition organized by DICT and CERT-PH. It brings together students from across the Philippines to solve security challenges and promote ethical hacking.

The event tested participants in core cybersecurity domains: Web Exploitation, Forensics, Network Security, and OSINT.

How it turned out

  • 1st Runner-Up for Team Category out of 11 teams (830 points).
  • 2nd Runner-Up for Individual Category (480 points).
Hack4Gov 2025 Team CategoryHack4Gov 2025 Individual Category

My experience

I didn’t really solve many challenges overall, finishing with a solve rate of about 17%, while focusing entirely on Web Exploitation (43%) and partially on OSINT (57%). I started strong by clearing two web problems early, but then hit a long stretch of stagnation, managing only a few low-point OSINT challenges.

Hack4Gov 2025 Solve Stats

Near the end of the competition, I finally broke through with a 200-point challenge involving Next.js middleware1, which significantly boosted our score and ended the experience on a high note.

Hack4Gov 2025 Solve History

Footnotes

  1. The challenge involved exploiting a critical Next.js middleware authorization bypass (CVE-2025-29927). See the official advisory for more details. ↩