Everything below is something I actually took part in. Writeups for some of these live under Writeups; the longer builds are in Projects.

Dates marked * come from when I posted about it rather than the event itself, so they may be off by a few weeks.

Competitions

Sunway CTF 2026

Sep 2026 * · 6th place (5th Runner Up) · RM700

Team CTF and a return to competitive play after a stretch focused on CPTS prep. Sixth of the field with PERISAI Beta.

Agentic AI-Driven CTF 2026

Aug 2026 * · 6th place

Entered mid-CPTS-prep to test whether a learned pentest methodology transfers to unfamiliar, AI-themed challenges. Takeaway: AI accelerates idea generation and analysis but its output still needs validating, and returning to a structured methodology beats blind tool-switching when stuck.

Taming iCTF F8 — Grand Finale

Jan 2026 * · Grand Finale qualifier

Short, high-pressure final round under four hours. Exposed Active Directory as the next area to build depth in.

iGOH 2025 — Finals

4 Dec 2025 · 8th place (finals)

One challenge short of solving everything in the prelims.

NEXSEC 2025 — Intervarsity Cyber Forensic Challenge

Dec 2025 * · 3rd place · RM1,000

Qualified through a jeopardy-format round into a finals round built like real incident response: raw artifacts, full analysis, and a written incident report, with only one hour on day two to answer from prior analysis. Handled the forensics category for the team; prepared with HTB Sherlock challenges and weekly write-ups.

SherpaCTF 2025

24 Nov 2025

Individual offline event, joined primarily for networking rather than placing.

IBOH 2025 — International Battle of Hackers

8 Nov 2025 · Stage 1: 5th place (local category) · Stage 2: 9th place (Attack & Defence, 29 Nov 2025)

Stage 1 was a jeopardy round that qualified the team for Stage 2, a first-time Attack & Defence format where the opening hours go to patching your own machine before other teams exploit it.

System Override CTF

Nov 2025 * · 3rd place in round 1; 12th of 56 teams overall

On-site event with roughly 200 participants.

Siber Siaga 2025 CODE COMBAT

Oct 2025 * · 14th place, Final Stage

First time the team reached a CTF final. One challenge away from the top-5 podium.

SunCTF 2025

30 Aug 2025

Team CTF focused on collaboration and problem-solving under time pressure.

L3AK CTF 2025

Jul 2025 * · Solved ‘Whitespace’ — cracked by only 132 of 1,500+ teams

48-hour online competition joined during semester break.

ICECTF

12 Apr 2025 · Top 10

Placed top 10 as a two-person team, against a field where most top-10 teams had three members.

UMCS CTF 2025

11 Apr 2025 · ~40th place

Solved two challenges; just outside the top-25 cutoff for the final round.

Certifications and training

• HTB CPTS — Certified Penetration Testing Specialist (in progress) — Jul 2026 *. Approximately 45% through the track as of July 2026
• CCNA: Enterprise Networking, Security, and Automation — Feb 2026 *
• HTB Academy modules — Jul 2025 *. Linux Fundamentals and others — directory navigation through container creation

Talks and community

CTF Challenge Creator

*2026 **

Author of challenges for Liga CTF 2026 and other events. Writing challenges forces both the attacker’s and the defender’s perspective on the same problem.

Speaker — Hack The Box Meetup

*2026 **

First speaking slot; shared knowledge with the local HTB community.

Cyber Skills Level Up (CSLU)

*Aug 2025 **

Two-day program. Day 1 blue team: memory analysis and malware analysis. Day 2 red team: mobile pentest and XSS / web exploitation.

Introduction to Capture The Flag

17 May 2025

Cybersecurity fundamentals, the Hack The Box platform, and a hands-on Web CTF workshop.

HTB Meetup #5 — printf(" Hello, Pwn World ! “)

*May 2025 **

Binary exploitation and buffer overflow fundamentals.

Writing

Short pieces I put on LinkedIn rather than here:

• AI is an accelerator, not a replacement for reasoning (Aug 2026 *) — Reflection from the UCSI Agentic AI CTF on validating AI output and falling back on methodology when stuck.
• Bad documentation, not difficulty, is what slows you down (Jul 2026 *) — On restructuring security notes: separating concepts from commands, linking notes instead of nesting folders, and writing for your future self.
• You can’t be good at only red team or only blue team (Dec 2025 *) — From NEXSEC 2025: why the two skill sets reinforce each other, and why report writing matters as much as technical skill.

Teammates across most of these: Mohammad Danish Hakim bin Mohd Nasir, Muhammad Muhaimin Ridzuan and Syamil Yusof.