Who will join the next
Italian Cyberdefender team?

Who will join the next
Italian Cyberdefender team?

Team Composition Rules

TeamItaly 2025

Every year, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) organizes the European Cybersecurity Challenge (ECSC) to favor the exchange of knowledge and talents from all Europe. The competion is open to all European countries, and each participating nation organizes a team composed by 10 players, evenly ditributed between juniors (between 14 and 20 years old) and seniors (between 21 and 25 years old).
The 2025 edition of the European Cybersecurity Challenge will be held from October 6th to October 10th, 2025, in Warsaw, Poland.
TeamItaly is the Italian Cyberdefender national team, which represents Italy in this and other international competitions. The best talents between the age of 14 and 25 can compete to get a spot in this team through a selection process structured in three main phases:
  • Phase 1: individuation of 50 national talents.
  • Phase 2: selection of 20 team members selected from the 50 chosen talents.
  • Phase 3: selection of the 10 team members for ECSC 2025.
What follows is the details of the three phases.

Phase 1: January 2025 - June 2025

The first selection phase will lead to the selection of at most 50 candidates for the making of TeamItaly 2025.
The following prerequisites must be met in order to participate in this phase:
  • Junior category: born between January 1st, 2005 and December 31st, 2010
  • Senior category: born between January 1st, 2000 and December 31st, 2004
Talents will be selected based on the following criteria:
  • the best 3 talents from OliCyber.IT 2025
  • the best 3 talents from CyberChallenge.IT 2025
  • the best 36 talents from the TeamItaly 2025 official selection event.
  • 8 talents who played other CTF competitions not considered in the previous criteria or who have demonstrated great value in the past either in TeamItaly or, more in general, in the Italian CTF community.
What follows is more information regarding the aformentioned competitions, providing more details about the specific selection criteria.

OliCyber.IT 2025

The Italian Olympiads in Cybersecurity (OliCyber.IT), organized by the CINI Cybersecurity National Lab del CINI, are a competition program aimed at connecting secondary school students with the issues of cybersecurity.
The selection for TeamItaly will consider the results of the national competition, trying to balance the demonstrated skills in the various challenge categories.

CyberChallenge.IT 2025

CyberChallenge.IT is the first cybersecurity training program for university and secondary school students, organized by the CINI Cybersecurity National Lab.
The selection for TeamItaly will consider the results of the local competition held on May 28th 2025, trying to balance the demonstrated skills in the various challenge categories and considering the two age categories defined by ECSC 2025.

Official selection event for TeamItaly 2025

On the 7th and the 8th of June, 2025, the official selection for TeamItaly 2025 will take place. It is a Jeopardy CTF lasting 24 hours, that will cover all the categories between cryptography, binary exploitation, reverse engineering, web security, forensics e miscellaneous. The participation is open to everyone, but only those in the correct age range will be able to compete for a place in TeamItaly 2025.
At the end of the competition, a general leaderboard will be generated, as well as specific leaderboards for each category or groups of cateogories, i.e. leaderboards generated considering only the challenges related to one ore more specific categories. In particular, the next phase will be accessible to at most 6 people for each of the following leaderboards:
  • general leaderboard
  • cryptography
  • binary exploitation
  • reverse engineering
  • web security
  • forensics and miscellaneous
The top 6 people from each leaderboard will be selected in order to guarantee at least 3 junior players.
In case one player will be present in more than one leaderboard (ex. general leaderboard and "cryptography" leaderboard), the organizers will be able to choose whether to move up the rankings or not.
In case of an insufficient number of players with at least one solve in some category leaderboard, the organizers will be able to move the rankings from the general leaderboard.

Phase 2: June - August 2025

Starting from the second half of June 2025, and up to the middle of August 2025, the participants selected during phase 1 will be involved in a training and selection phase.
From July 14th to July 20th, 2025, the 50 participants of phase 2 will take part in a bootcamp in person, for a week-long retreat at the UN ITCILO campus in Turin. During this training week, advanced training will be organized, in order to expand the knowledge gained from the CyberChallenge.IT and OliCyber.IT programs, together with eventual participation in relevant CTFs, to better evaluate participants skillsets and improve teamwork.
Commitment, participation, and the result achieved in played CTFs, will be used as metric to select the 20 team members (10 juniors and 10 seniors) that will access the last phase.

Phase 3: September 2025

Between September 7th and September 14th 2025, admitted players will be meeting each other for a week-long retreat at the UN ITCILO campus in Turin. At the end of the bootcamp, the final 10 players (5 juniors and 5 seniors) representing Italy at the European Cyber Security Challenge 2025 in October will be selected and announced.