(Andrew T. Yarbrough / Fourth Estate)
Mason’s 72 hour hackathon and Capture the Flag promotes competition and community building
BY ANDREW T. YARBROUGH, STAFF WRITER
Mason’s Computer Science Club and PatriotHacks hosted HackFax x PatriotHacks, a 72-hour hacking challenge, from Friday, Feb. 13 to Sunday, Feb. 15 on campus. The event brought students from over 30 colleges and a total of over 500 participants, according to the organizers.
The community-building event was both a Capture The Flag (CTF), where participants completed short security challenges, and a hackathon where participants collaborated to build software or hardware projects in a short amount of time. The hackathon was also an official Major League Hacking member event.
Major League Hacking is dedicated to building the hacker community across the world, giving insight and guidance on organizing major events. The organization sent a representative to Hackfax x PatriotHacks to ensure the event went smoothly.
They also provided students access to developer tools like Gemini, GitHub Copilot, DigitalOcean, ElevenLabs, Solana and Snowflake. Students at the event could borrow devices from the DigiKey hardware lab like Raspberry Pi, Google Home and Arduinos to return at the end of the weekend.
Throughout the weekend, students participated in workshops on various topics including “User Interface/User Experience” design by Peraton, “How to Pitch Ideas” by Colorstack, “How to Maximize Total Compensation” by the National Society of Black Engineers and a women in STEM panel and early career panel provided by Microsoft employees.
(Andrew T. Yarbrough / Fourth Estate)
Over 15 organizations provided a total of 27 workshops in the Johnson Center and Horizon Hall.
The weekend kicked off on Friday, Feb. 13, at an opening ceremony where the organizers introduced the sponsors of the event, including AWS, Cloudforce, Microsoft, Peraton and Cipher Tech Solutions. The sponsors also introduced the prizes students could win and the categories each hackathon team could participate in.
Teams could participate in a range of categories for their hackathon project, including categories like sustainability, health/health care, education, blockchain, cyber and security presented by the organizers, or categories like PatriotAI, UI/UX, startups and digital forensics presented by sponsors.
The event was open to everyone regardless of skill level. For those that were new to hackathons and CTFs, there was a virtual “Intro to Hackathon” event and “CTF Info Session” before the weekend began.
AI use was highly encouraged, with multiple seminars showcasing how to use the latest AI models like Google Gemini, GitHub Copilot and Mason’s own PatriotAI provided by Cloudforce, another one of the event sponsors.
While the hackathon project encompassed most of the weekend, the CTF portion went from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, giving students the opportunity to complete as many challenges as possible. The CTF staff provided support, guidance and answers for participants on Sunday.
The event continued through Sunday with judging of the hackathon projects throughout most of the day in Horizon Hall. The event concluded with an ending ceremony at 7 p.m., with winners receiving prizes for both the CTF events and the hackathon.
When they weren’t preparing their demonstrations or completing challenges, students participated in events such as a gaming tournament by Ernest and Young, one of the largest professional services companies in the world, break dancing by BreakFamous, a club at Mason and card games provided by the Engineering and Computing Student Council.
Even though the event was technical, challenging and hands-on, Computer Science Club President Emmanuel Ortega, a junior majoring in Computer Science, emphasized that the organizers want everyone to know the event was really about “building community.”
