UAlbany
A hands-on lab for capture-the-flag competition and data-driven security research. Real challenges, real datasets, and a team that learns by breaking things.
Who We Are
Where HackersMeet Data
UAlbany Labs brings together people who like taking systems apart. We compete in capture-the-flag events, build our own challenges, and turn what we find into research backed by real data.
Whether you have never opened a terminal or you already read assembly for fun, there is a challenge at your level and a teammate who can show you the next step.
Learn by Breaking
Every skill starts with a live target: a vulnerable web app, a binary, a packet capture or a cipher to crack.
Data First
Questions get answered with evidence. We collect, clean and analyze real security data before drawing conclusions.
Team Play
CTFs are a team sport. Members pair up across web, binary, crypto and forensics to solve what no one could alone.
Share What Works
Write-ups, tools and findings are documented so the next member starts further ahead than we did.
What We Study
Research Areas
Our research sits where offensive security meets data. Each area feeds our CTF play, and each CTF teaches us something worth studying.
Threat Data
Threat Intelligence Analysis
Collecting and correlating indicators, attack patterns and public reports to understand who is attacking what, and how.
Packets & Logs
Network Forensics
Reconstructing what happened on a network from packet captures, flow records and logs, and building tools that do it faster.
Machine Learning
Machine Learning for Security
Training and testing models that spot malicious traffic, phishing and anomalies, and probing how those models can be fooled.
Open Sources
Open-Source Intelligence
Answering hard questions from public information: domains, certificates, metadata, maps and the open web.
Binaries
Reverse Engineering
Taking compiled programs and malware samples apart to learn how they work, safely, inside isolated lab machines.
Ciphers
Applied Cryptography
Finding where real-world encryption goes wrong: weak keys, bad randomness and protocols used the wrong way.
Capture the Flag
The Arena
Jeopardy-style challenges across six categories. Solve a challenge, find the hidden flag, submit it for points.
Web
Injection, auth bypass, broken access control.
Pwn
Memory bugs, buffer overflows, shellcode.
Crypto
Broken ciphers, bad keys, math puzzles.
Forensics
Disk images, memory dumps, packet captures.
Reversing
Crackmes, obfuscation, custom VMs.
OSINT
Find it with nothing but public sources.
How It Works
Form a Team
Join solo or bring friends. Teams mix beginners with experienced players.
Pick a Challenge
Every challenge hides a flag. Start easy, work up to the hard ones.
Capture the Flag
Find the flag, submit it, earn points. Hints are there when you're stuck.
Write It Up
Share how you solved it so everyone gets better, then climb the scoreboard.
$ ./ctf --status Welcome, challenger. Next event: announced soon $ cat rules.txt - flags look like flag{...} - don't attack the scoreboard - share write-ups after the event $
Data Research
From Packets To Papers
Every challenge solved and every packet captured is data. We turn it into research that explains how attacks really happen.
Collect
CTF telemetry, honeypot traffic, public threat feeds and open datasets.
Analyze
Cleaning, labeling and modeling the data with reproducible notebooks.
Publish
Findings, write-ups and tools shared with the community.
How We Do Research
- No personal data collected without consent
- Malware and live targets stay inside isolated lab networks
- Every result reproducible from code and data
- Responsible disclosure for anything real we find
Get Involved
Join The Lab
No experience needed. Curiosity and a willingness to get stuck are enough to start.
Players
Want to compete? Join the team and get invited to practice nights and events.
Researchers
Have a question the data could answer? Bring it, or join a project already running.
Partners
Sponsor an event, donate challenge infrastructure, or share a dataset with the lab.
Say Hello
contact@ualbanylab.org