The technical backbone behind the UAE's national cyber initiatives

The UAE Cyber Security Council is our national-level partner. The relationship has been there from the beginning. Whenever CSC needs a CTF at a major event, a national exercise, or an international initiative, CTF.ae is the team that builds and runs it.

Together, we've delivered 9 projects across 3 years: CTFs at the UAE's biggest conferences, an international post-quantum cryptography competition, and a national cyber drill for federal government entities. This is not a vendor relationship. It is a shared mission to build national cyber capability.

CyberQ is CSC's flagship conference, specialized in post-quantum cryptography and AI security. For this event, we designed and hosted an international CTF with a global online qualifier and an in-person final round in Abu Dhabi. 10 teams made it to the finals.

The challenge set was built around the frontier of cryptographic research. Lattice-based schemes, LWE variants, ECDSA exploits, post-quantum signature attacks, and AI model exploitation. This is not a beginner competition. This is where the world's best come to prove it.

We also designed custom hardware badges for every participant. An eagle-shaped PCB with an embedded display, integrated directly into the CTF. One of the challenges required hacking the badge itself.

A national cyber drill. An Attack/Defense exercise hosted at ADGM Academy in Abu Dhabi, bringing together teams from 30 federal government entities. Each entity defended its own simulated infrastructure against realistic attack scenarios.

The drill addressed three critical sectors: critical infrastructure, security and defense, and law enforcement. Scenarios included web exploitation, cryptographic attacks, and OT exploitation targeting simulated water desalination plant systems. This is the kind of exercise where the consequences of failure mirror the real world.