The KMA.BlueLight team, comprising four students from the Cryptographic Engineering Institute, has claimed the championship title at Cyber SEA Game 2025 – a regional cybersecurity skills competition for young talents across ASEAN.

The Cyber SEA Game, co-organized annually by the ASEAN-Japan Cybersecurity Capacity Building Centre and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), targets young participants under the age of 27, including students and junior engineers.

The competition aims to evaluate and enhance participants’ capabilities in various domains of computer systems and information security. It also creates a platform for young cybersecurity enthusiasts across ASEAN to connect and exchange knowledge.

In 2025, Cyber SEA Game saw participation from nine ASEAN countries including Brunei, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The team from the Cryptographic Engineering Institute earned the right to represent Vietnam at this year’s Cyber SEA Game after winning first prize in the “ASEAN Student Cybersecurity 2024” competition, organized by the Vietnam Information Security Association (VNISA).

The Cyber SEA Game 2025 was held in person in Bangkok over two days, October 16–17, with participants competing in a Jeopardy-style Capture the Flag (CTF) format. The contest featured several technical categories, including:

Web security – identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications;
Forensics – incident analysis and digital evidence tracking;
Reverse engineering – analyzing and decompiling software code;
Pwnable – exploiting vulnerabilities in binary applications;
Cryptography – decoding and attacking encryption algorithms.

The KMA.BlueLight team, representing the Cryptographic Engineering Institute, emerged victorious. The team included four final-year students majoring in information security: Nguyen Van Hoang, Nghiem Trung Hau, Phan Van Hoang Viet, and Le Xuan Son.

This marks the third time Vietnam has taken the top spot at the Cyber SEA Game and the second time that a team from the Cryptographic Engineering Institute has earned the championship title. Previously, in 2022, team KMA.L3N0V0 from the same institute also won the competition.

Statistically, Vietnam has achieved impressive results at Cyber SEA Game over the years: three first prizes (2015, 2022, 2025), four second prizes (2019, 2020, 2021, 2023), and two third prizes (2017, 2018).

Speaking to VietNamNet, Dr. Lai Minh Tuan, supervisor of the student cybersecurity team at the Cryptographic Engineering Institute, shared that this result is the culmination of a rigorous and disciplined training journey by both students and faculty.

“The Cyber SEA Game 2025 championship is not only a source of pride for our institute and the Government Cipher Committee, but also a clear affirmation of the capabilities of Vietnam’s young generation in cybersecurity,” Dr. Tuan said.

“This competition shows that Vietnam has all it takes to compete, to master technology, and to firmly protect our national cyberspace.”

By winning first prize at Cyber SEA Game 2025, team KMA.BlueLight will now represent ASEAN at the International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC) 2025, taking place from November 11 to 14 in Japan.

According to the Cryptographic Engineering Institute, student teams from the school also performed well at two other cybersecurity competitions in September, held in Da Nang: “CyberCon CTF 2025” and “Digital Dragons: The Cybersecurity Challenge - DDC 2025”.

At CyberCon CTF 2025-part of the CyberCon Asia 2025 event co-organized by Japan’s Fore and Suganuma Group and Duy Tan University-two student teams, Rubichan and Blue.zip, won first and second prize respectively.

Meanwhile, at DDC 2025, jointly organized by EvvoLab (Singapore) and the Vietnam-Korea University of Information and Communication Technology under the expert guidance of the National Cybersecurity Association (NCA), student teams CyberCh1ck and Rubichan won first and third place respectively.

These victories underscore Vietnam’s continued growth and success in nurturing cybersecurity talent and strengthening its digital defense capabilities.

PV