 us for this award ceremony. It's the second edition of the UNODC Africa Digital Forensics Challenge and we're so glad that the competition went well. Everyone has joined us so I think we're going to kick-start the competition with a few words from Carmen. Carmen, over to you. Can you just give us a welcome remark and kind of like give us generous stats on the competition this year. Hi everybody, thank you Glory and Glory. You're still sharing the screen from Teams so just to let you know about that. It is really a pleasure for me to be able to be here and be part of this ceremony with all of you that are able to attend today. It's really a joy. So my name is Carmen Corbin and I am the head of Counter-Cybercrime Programming for UNODC's Global Cybercrime Program in Africa and my team is the one that has developed this CTF competition and is working throughout Africa on building capacity on digital forensics and understanding cybercrime investigations and cybercrime in general. So this is a really cool event that we get to do and this is now our second one and so you know with that we have still been learning a lot, still been trying to understand a little bit better about how to run this competition but truly this has been an exciting year for us and we've seen a lot of changes from what we actually did last year. So I don't know that all of you participated last year or if any of you participated last year but we had a few changes around what happened from last year. So this year again was the second edition of the competition and we had a groundbreaking number of people who actually registered. We had 1027 eligible people from 45 African countries which is amazing who registered for this year's CTF competition. So that is in comparison to last year which was 282 participants and there was a percentage increase of over 265 percent. So that's awesome and I think that the more and more that we're getting experts like you to join and really participate in this competition is fantastic because we're spreading knowledge and understanding of what digital forensics is and why it matters across the African continent. We had 21 percent female participation this year again which was similar to last year and also really good and it really goes to show that competitions like this one truly have their place on the African continent. So during the four weeks of competition there were five tip videos that Joshua put out and they were published to help the participants navigate the different tasks. 56 challenge questions were ultimately set in the competition and the different tasks issued varied from electronic evidence searches to open source investigations to dark web investigations and to cryptocurrency. So of the 1027 registered participants there were 149 teams that were created and these teams submitted a total of 1518 correct answers. So that's a lot of numbers but basically that is to say this was a great year. This was an amazing year and you guys were all really critical to to helping push this forward and really make it a fantastic competition. We all really work together to make this this edition of the competition a success and you know we hope that through this type of competition we can truly shine a light on the digital forensic talents and the skills that are on the African continent that are in you and that and what the African continent has to offer and that people in and African countries throughout the continent have these talents and skills that are available to fight cyber crime and work in cyber security. So that is an overview of the competition. So Glory I'm going to pass back to you. Thank you very much Camyn and of course Africa does have the talent and digital forensic and competitions like this that are going to help us continue to promote them to you know to the limelight. I think we're going to pass the mic now to Joshua. I think Joshua is going to give us a little more of like an overview but more technically of what actually happened because people like me will have no idea what's happening. We will have no technical idea on digital forensics can really tell you what really happened. So I think Joshua over to you now make it easier for the rest of us. Okay I don't know if I'll make things easier but I'll try. So yeah this year again we tried to do a lot different from based on what we learned last year. So last year we had four different data sets. One was like a computer hard drive one was RAM. I think we had network data traffic that they had to analyze and then I think a mobile phone and all of the different data sets were kind of related but also there wasn't an overall story really about it. So one thing that I really missed or I tried to do this year was actually build that story out so they could actually have a real case to solve which was a lot harder to make than I expected but anyway so this year basically we had a victim come in with their computer and we also had a RAM dump from that computer and they got the entire data set at the same time and then that got them so far and then in that system there was some cryptocurrency things they had to investigate and then that also took us online for online tools for cryptocurrency investigation. There were also some leads that took us to the dark web and then they had to analyze a real dark web server which I think people thought was pretty interesting based on the based on the answers that were coming in and then that finally led us to the suspect and the last week was getting basically the suspect system that kind of ties the entire story together and then we tried something that I've never seen in a CTF before so I really wasn't sure how it would work but it seemed to go okay and that is actually writing a final forensic report as one of the questions and the people who submitted reports it was amazing they did so good and it was just like a small little box to put your report in but they were like full professional reports it was it was really great actually so hopefully this year people saw that it was an entire case and then you actually had to not just answer a question but you have to think about what's going on and and what is the actual case and all of the details going on here. The problem with that though that I saw is that this year it was much harder so I think I think this year although it was I hope more realistic it was also more difficult so I need to find a good balance there because I really liked last year that anyone could kind of join any week and still get something out of it this week like this time you could kind of do that but not as not as clearly as last time so I've still got some things to think about if and when we do this next year so anyway I hope everyone enjoyed it it was a lot of work and I had fun like looking at what everyone was was submitting in the back end so I hope you liked it thank you very much Joshua actually so some participants did share their forensics report on Twitter I visited some of them I had no idea what it was all about but it seems kind of cool so so I guess that did a great job on that one okay so I think we're going to move on to the our proper and we're going to call in our friends from chain analysis who kind of like I would say our collaborators for the year they are the ones that are going to present the award that we're going to give to the top three winners of this year's CTF so I think we're going to move on to Yasin and Yasin is going to give us like a presentation of what the award is all about and how winners can use it to their advantage so Yasin over to you yeah thanks thanks glory and thanks everybody for for having us should I go ahead and share my screen of just the the few slides that we had okay let me go ahead and get that right so you might just have to make me a presenter real quick so I think usually if you're able to right click on me in the attendees list it should be able to give me a few extra special permissions there we go um all right open I did it glory awesome all right and I am hoping you all can see my screen with a chain analysis overview here on the right yep great awesome so um you know again thanks for having us we are really just tremendously humbled and honored to to be a part of you know this um this capture the flag um the second edition of the capture um the flag challenge um for digital forensics across the african continent so I'm going to be very brief I'm just going to give you guys a quick overview of who we are and then I would love to introduce you to my colleague Julie Montrose who is really going to do the the presentation of the award so um you know as Joshua was mentioning you guys did have a few cryptocurrency elements here this year um where you had to go online and use things like block explorers and other open source uh tools that are available uh to folks but um you know us as a company we uh we were founded in 2014 and really what we are is a blockchain data um and and forensic slash analysis um you know company so what we do is we're we're actually providing you know um data on various blockchains like what you see on the screen here we work with various uh verticals of government as well as private sector companies um and really around the world we've got over 750 plus customers we're operating in 70 plus countries I think you know very soon you will start to hear about new offices for chain analysis opening on the african continent to support um you know all all of the the fine talent that is there and and you know we've got plenty of folks including myself that have you know african heritage or background that work at the company today um you know we've got over 700 plus employees and we do um you know recently have had the um the honor of announcing you know a bit more funding to continue um on our mission here at chain analysis and so you know I'm just going to leave this on on the screen these are a few law enforcement or type cases that uh chain analysis has helped um you know whether it be law enforcement governments uh private sector entities as well right in some of these cases these are massive hacks that private sector institutions have had to um to kind of mitigate and figure out what happened so um you know if you if you just really quickly take a step back um when things get more complex there are tools out there in the market that can help oversimplify things and really help you follow the flow of funds um when they are in a digital format if you will so um that was really it I didn't want to go too deep I just wanted to kind of again thank you all for for allowing us to participate as a partner here um and with that Julie I will turn things over to you um and move on to the next slide. Awesome thank you so much Yucine such a quick but thorough um overview of what we do at chain analysis so super excited like Yucine said to be part of this initiative um this year my name is Julie Montrose and I lead university recruiting at chain analysis since we are um a newly formed startup since we've been around since 2014 we've actually just started our first official interim program this past summer with a cohort of 17 students and hopefully we'll be expanding to um other areas where we operate in the near future so um this is really an awesome gateway for us to get a little bit of the taste of the talent that's available um on the african continent so um with that we noticed that there was a skills gap when recruiting students um coming into the crypto and blockchain space and um we wanted to launch an initiative that allowed students to get um equipped with blockchain and crypto fundamentals and we launched something called crypto capstone crypto capstone is a four-day virtual session that teaches students all about blockchain crypto um alternate coins block explorers so all kinds of really good stuff to help you um get a little bit more emerged in the space and this is a free student opportunity where you get to attend a four-day virtual session with chain analysis and at the end have an opportunity to sit for your cryptocurrency fundamentals examination which will grant you a certificate that you can post on your linkedin page and use on your resume and um many of the students know here you need a lot of good content to talk about in interviews and this is um another reason why you should um participate in this certificate program so we launched this uh cohort back in may and we're going to run another cohort this coming january because we've had so much awesome feedback and it's been such a success to help us pipeline students for our upcoming opportunities and spread the um the and close the knowledge gap in the near future so um some of the winners from this competition will get um a chance to participate in our next cohort in january we're super super psyched about that not only will you have a chance to get your certificate but you'll also get to meet um employees across chain analysis and learn about the different careers that they have here and then um you'll get chain analysis swag we're going to send everybody an awesome water bottle and then last but not least we do give away two one thousand dollar scholarships so two students from the cohort um will have a chance to randomly win one of those scholarships um so yeah that's a little bit about crypto capstone like i said we're excited to include students that are winners from this competition but more more information on that um gloria will share with in a moment so glory back to you okay thank you very much uh yesine and jolly that sounds really great i have no idea what crypto capstone is all about but i'm pretty sure it's going to be very exciting for our participants who are actually maybe professionals or interested in this field okay so i think we are going to move on to our presentation of awards to our top three top three teams uh joshua we're coming back to you because our top three teams need to have something at the end of the day so what are they going back home with sorry i'm getting sorry here um so yeah the top three teams uh because it is um uh quite a few people i think it's almost 15 or so um d4 science was trying to think about what what we could give people who already had a pretty high skill level because they won the ctf um so something that would be interesting for them but that we could also give to a lot of people um so we tried to um uh what we found was um probably try hack me or not probably probably we found try hack me certificates that way um people can i'm sure everyone who's who's on the top team has probably heard of try hack me before and probably used it quite a bit they have um beginner through super advanced um uh security and digital forensics like challenges that are available so i think everyone who actually does the ctf enjoys challenges and i think that try hack me probably fits them the best for that so um the top three teams are going to get uh try hack me certificates so watch out for that um and also um i'll just i'll just add it here the top um 10 on uh teams and individuals will all get uh digital badges so that way people can put it on their social media and actually say that they have achieved something amazing out of a thousand people you were the top 10 so um great great job on that so you'll get the badges and top teams will get the uh try hack me um certificates so thank you so much okay thank you very much Joshua that sounds really exciting and uh i wanted a top three to come in those who want the competition just wanted them to come in and tell us about the experience in the competition and what they and how they aim to move forward after this competition so i think i'm just going to give them the floor to do that and i think we're going to start with uh save uh save can you turn on your mic and your camera and you know we have two minutes so you know wow us hi save you hear me yes we can hear you okay so first start with competition okay uh this year was really great okay uh but um what i didn't like uh most of it was uh the brute forcing challenge that's all but i like i like too much and uh that it is connected together the whole case is connected together that's it okay so if thank you i wanted to actually this bit about the the prize that you're going to be receiving from chain analysis how do you feel about it do you think it's something that is going to be a plus to you and to your career uh again uh about the the award the the capstone that you're going to be receiving from chain analysis uh what do you think about it do you think it's something that is going to be another uh bonus to you a plus to your career yeah i think it would be great okay so we we hope you have a great time participating in that uh in the capstone thank you very much save uh we're going to take in mamadu now mamadu hi can you turn on your camera and your mic hello hi mamadu hi hi everyone thank you very much for joining us uh thank you uh first of all thank you for uh for for the un dc and for everyone uh to to uh to organize such such cgf it was very interested and thank you joshua again for for your page on youtube and we don't know a lot of with with uh with that one and it was very interesting uh ctf and i um i learned a lot and i think it will be a plus in my career i'm kuta i'm from moritanya and we don't have much uh a lot of uh i would say people who work in the cyber in cyber security so i think it will be very great for my career and thank you again thank you very much mamadu uh we were supposed to take shakshakshakut i can't see him is he here can you turn on your camera and your mic if you're here i can't i can't tell if you're here i can't see your name okay so because i saw him earlier but i maybe he dropped off or something uh anyway i think okay still not here okay i i think we're going to move on we are we're ahead of time we're supposed to be here for 30 minutes and we still have like six minutes left on our time which is uh i'm pushing now if i can say goshua do you want to say something i see you with your hands oh okay yeah yeah i had something real quick i just um you know i've seen everyone from their screen name for a really long time so it's super interesting to see their faces i like um yeah it's really cool it's nice to nice to finally see you guys so i think we're going to ask everyone to turn on their camera just so we take a screenshot of uh of it and i think we're going to put them on social media so can everyone turn on their camera say if mamadu lassisi everyone joining us i don't know why she could decided not to join us but hey thank you for saying everybody hello juniors hi it is so nice to see everybody's faces okay i think we're going to take a screenshot real fast okay ready is everyone ready big smiles big smiles say cheese thank you very much so i think we have uh taken the picture we want to thank everyone for joining us it's quite unfortunate that she actually couldn't be here to you know give us this opinion about the competition gloria coming he's trying to join right now i think he's trying to join right now do you see him not really if you see him can you let him in yeah you can see him okay yeah he is he's finally joined us thank you i think you fell out there for a while but thank you very much for coming back yeah i have some issue in my connection i'm actually on on vacation but i want i want to thank you and i really enjoyed and learned a lot of this it was my my first four and six years and it was cool thank you okay thank you very much uh shea good it was it was a pleasure to have you too i was so happy that you enjoyed it and that you you loved it and we hope to see you guys next year too if it's possible tell your friends let them join we need to have more people join the competition we want to see more people come on show that aprica has this great talents here that they can show to the world so we'll love that for next year we're waiting to see every one of you i hope you have a great time participating in your channel as it's capstone and for the team is participants participating in the hack it and have me competition so come in i'm going to pass over to you to uh to close the ceremony thank you glorie and thank you all for joining whether you're on vacation or you have challenging connection i too am on leave as well right now but this was such an important event that i wanted to be here too to see you all and to really extend my sincere congratulations i cannot tell you how exciting it is for our program to really be able to highlight the talent that is in africa i think that a lot of times this is not something that the media says and that you hear around the world but we are trying to highlight the work that you guys do because it is truly amazing and i know i joshua and i talked about making this year's competition a little more challenging a little harder a little bit more complex and i'm happy to hear that you all enjoyed a little bit more of the complexity about that and and we're able to really learn something from it chain analysis our partners there we are so gracious to have you be on board with us on this activity and to again further highlight the talent that is in africa i you guys i hope you enjoy the capstone come back to us tell us about it tell us what you did tell us how this is helping you because we want to do more of it and the more you tell us the more we can probably do so we're going to hold another ctf next year so be sure to keep your eyes out we want to see you bringing in new people we want to hit 2000 participants or more next year that's a little talent um but really i'm i really want to just send my sincere congratulations to all of you you are the future of africa and we are really happy to help continue to support you and to try to show your talents across the globe so have a lovely day everybody enjoy your prizes that you get the digital badges and also the participation participation and the different trainings and we'll see you next year i just wanted to close with a round of applause for all everyone yes everyone who participated thank you and we wish you all the best bye bye everybody bye thank you be the best bye