Cybersecurity Competitions: picoCTF and CyberPatriot Prep
Two of the best-known student cyber competitions, one defensive skill set, and a clear line between what is allowed and what is not.
Syllabus updated October 2026
Questions? WhatsApp +91 91233 66161 or email connect@modernagecoders.com
Recordings are free with a Google sign-in. These recordings show how we teach, not the exact syllabus of this course.
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Book a Priority DemoHow long this course takes
This course runs 6 months (24 weeks) at 2 live classes/week + 2-3 hours practice. The range allows for background and pace: a complete beginner uses the full span, and a student with prior knowledge finishes sooner. The syllabus below is planned to the shorter end, with margin kept for revision.
For personalised duration planning, call +91 91233 66161 and we'll map a schedule to your goals.
At a glance
- Who it is for
- Beginner to intermediate, ages 13 to 18, no prior security experience needed.
- Prerequisites
- None required. Some Python helps in month 5, and we teach the small amount needed
- Format
- Live, interactive classes with a real instructor, never pre-recorded videos. Live classes run about one hour.
- Language
- English or Hindi, depending on the batch.
- Duration
- 6 months (24 weeks)
- Weekly commitment
- 2 live classes/week + 2-3 hours practice
- Class size
- Group batches of 15 to 20 students, mini batches of up to 6, or 1-on-1.
- Certificate
- Certificate from Modern Age Coders, awarded on passing the final assessment
- Watch first
- Free recordings of real classes for ages 13 and up, free with a Google sign-in. These recordings show how we teach, not the exact syllabus of this course.
- Live demo
- Optional. Enrol directly on this page, or book a Priority Demo: a full live class of about 45 to 60 minutes with a mentor reserved for you.
- Questions
- WhatsApp +91 91233 66161 or email connect@modernagecoders.com.
How we teach
Deep understanding. Real projects. Expert guidance.
Learn coding, AI and maths through careful explanations, practical demonstrations, and hands-on problem-solving. Our instructors guide you from the foundations to advanced ideas, helping you understand what happens, why it happens, and how to build it yourself.
You will explore concepts step by step, write and improve code, investigate mistakes, ask questions, and apply your knowledge to meaningful projects. Lessons are designed around active participation, thoughtful feedback, and growing independence.
Expert-led live teaching, with practical participation built into every lesson.
- Students explain their thinking.
- Instructors demonstrate, then guide practice.
- Learners code, solve, or build during lessons.
- Questions and misconceptions get attention.
- Assignments receive useful feedback.
- Progress is checked before advancing.
How to join Cybersecurity Competitions for Teens: picoCTF and CyberPatriot Prep
Four steps from this page to the first class. See a full class first with a Priority Demo, or choose a plan and enrol today.
Rated 4.9 across 547 Google reviews. Monthly billing, cancel any time.
How enrolment works
See a full class first (optional)
Book a Priority Demo: a live class of about 45 to 60 minutes with a mentor reserved for you, today or tomorrow. After the class the mentor sends a written skill report and a personal learning roadmap on WhatsApp. If you enrol, the demo fee is adjusted against your first month's fee. Share your demo Order ID with us on WhatsApp and we take it off.
Book a Priority DemoDemo fee ₹499Choose a plan
Group batch (15 to 20 students), mini batch (up to 6 students, India only) or 1-on-1 with your own mentor. Every plan is live online, and each class runs about one hour. The cards below show classes per week and the monthly fee in your currency.
Enrol and pay the first month
Press Enrol Now on your plan, fill in the student's name, email and phone, and pay through secure Razorpay checkout: UPI, cards or net banking in India, and debit or credit card from any other country.
Fix your class timings
After payment, message us on WhatsApp or call +91 91233 66161 with the student's name, the course and your preferred time slot. We confirm the batch, send the class link and schedule the first class at your chosen time.
Billing is monthly and you can cancel any time.
International Students (Outside India)
Billed monthly in US dollars, the same price in every country. Contact us with any questions.
Questions before you enrol? Talk to our team.
Ask about class timings, the right level for your child, what they need to know already, or payment. Parents and adult learners can reach us on WhatsApp, by email or by phone.
Program Overview
Student cybersecurity competitions come in two main shapes, and this course prepares for both. CyberPatriot, the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air & Space Forces Association, runs the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, in which teams of middle and high school students find and fix security vulnerabilities in virtual Windows and Linux systems and are scored on how secure they make them. picoCTF, the capture-the-flag program built at Carnegie Mellon University and now part of CMU's free CyLab Security Academy, sets puzzle challenges in areas such as general skills, cryptography and forensics, each hiding a flag to find.
The first two months build the foundations both need: the Linux command line, Windows administration, how networks move data, and a written white-hat agreement that every student signs before any practice begins. Months three and four are CyberPatriot-style hardening: user and password policy, services, firewalls, updates, permissions and the forensics questions on a practice virtual machine each student sets up with the teacher, worked against the clock and as a team. Months five and six are capture-the-flag skills: encodings and ciphers, file and packet forensics, reading code, and how web and memory bugs are recognised and fixed.
Everything is ethical and defensive. Students practise only on a practice virtual machine they set up with the teacher and on platforms designed for practice, where every challenge is meant to be solved. Nobody is taught to touch a system they do not own or have permission to test, and the legal and ethical lines are taught as part of the skill, not as a disclaimer.
What Makes This Program Different
- Prepares for both competition styles: CyberPatriot-style defence of Windows and Linux systems, and picoCTF-style capture-the-flag puzzles
- Defensive by design: every bug a student finds in a CTF challenge is paired with the fix a defender would make
- Practice only on your own practice virtual machine and on purpose-built practice platforms, never on real systems
- A white-hat agreement signed in week one and revisited every month, covering permission, disclosure and competition rules
- Team skills taught on purpose: roles, checklists and communication during a timed round
- Written solutions for every challenge, so students learn to explain their reasoning as well as find the answer
Your Learning Journey
Career Progression
Detailed Course Curriculum
Explore the complete week-by-week breakdown of what you'll learn in this comprehensive program.
Topics Covered
- Permission as the dividing line between security work and crime
- Competition rules: what is allowed during a round and what gets a team disqualified
- The white-hat agreement every student signs before practice begins
- How CyberPatriot and capture-the-flag events differ, and what each one rewards
- Setting up a practice lab with a free virtual machine program
- Snapshots: how to break a practice system safely and restore it
Projects You Build
- Signed white-hat agreement and a working practice lab with a Linux virtual machine and a restore snapshot
Practice & Assignments
Write a short note explaining, in your own words, why practising only on authorised systems matters
Topics Covered
- Navigating the file system: pwd, ls, cd and paths
- Reading files with cat, less, head and tail
- Searching with grep and find
- Pipes and redirection
- File permissions and ownership with ls -l, chmod and chown
- Users, groups and sudo
Projects You Build
- Command line treasure hunt: an instructor-built set of files and folders with clues found only by using the right commands
Practice & Assignments
Solve ten general skills challenges on a practice platform and keep a command notebook
Assessment
Month 1 check: a timed command line task in the practice lab
Topics Covered
- Local users and groups, and who should be an administrator
- Password and account lockout policies in Local Security Policy
- Services: what runs automatically and why that matters
- Windows Update, Windows Security and the firewall
- Installed programs and how to spot software that should not be there
- Event Viewer as a record of what happened
Projects You Build
- Read-only Windows settings audit on your own computer: users, services and updates checked against a written checklist, nothing changed
Practice & Assignments
Document ten Windows security settings: where each one lives and what the secure value is
Topics Covered
- IP addresses, subnets and the idea of a network
- Ports and services: what is listening and why
- TCP, UDP and the handshake
- DNS and how names become addresses
- Reading a packet capture in Wireshark on files we provide
- Switches, routers and how traffic finds its way
Projects You Build
- Packet capture walkthrough: an annotated explanation of a provided capture from first packet to last
Practice & Assignments
Answer a set of questions about two provided packet captures and explain how each answer was found
Assessment
Phase 1 assessment: a written and practical check on Linux, Windows and networking basics, plus the ethics questions
Topics Covered
- Reading the scenario first: which users, software and services are authorised
- Removing unauthorised users and fixing administrator rights
- Setting password, lockout and audit policies
- Disabling unneeded services and features
- Updates, firewall and built-in protection settings
- Answering forensics questions before changing anything that might destroy evidence
Projects You Build
- Personal Windows hardening checklist, checked read-only against your own computer's settings
Practice & Assignments
Harden one practice image and record every change made, why it was made and how it was checked
Topics Covered
- Users, groups and the sudoers file
- Password policy and locking unused accounts
- Package updates with the system package manager
- The uncomplicated firewall, ufw
- Securing remote login settings and disabling what is not needed
- Finding unwanted software, scheduled tasks and dangerous file permissions
Projects You Build
- Personal Linux hardening checklist, tested on your own Linux practice virtual machine
Practice & Assignments
Harden one Linux practice image and compare your checklist with a classmate's
Assessment
Month 3 check: a timed hardening round on a practice image, reviewed item by item against the scenario and your checklist
Topics Covered
- IP addressing and subnetting practice
- Configuring a small simulated network: addresses, switches and a router
- Common server roles and the extra settings they need
- Secure file sharing and remote access settings
- Networking quiz practice in the style of the Cisco Networking Challenge
- Using the official training materials when a coach provides access
Projects You Build
- Small simulated network built and documented, with a subnetting worksheet
Practice & Assignments
Complete a networking quiz and build one small simulated network from a written brief
Topics Covered
- Team roles: Windows lead, Linux lead, forensics, and someone tracking the score
- Splitting work using the scenario and the checklists
- Communicating clearly under time pressure
- Keeping notes so nothing is done twice or undone
- Reviewing a round: what scored, what was missed and why
- Competition rules on outside help during a round
Projects You Build
- Full mock team round on your Linux practice virtual machines and written Windows scenarios, followed by a written team review
Practice & Assignments
Write your role card for a team round: your checklist, your handoffs and what you report
Assessment
Phase 2 assessment: a timed team round plus an individual hardening task
Topics Covered
- Encodings are not encryption: binary, hexadecimal, ASCII and Base64
- Classical ciphers: Caesar, substitution and Vigenere, and how they are broken
- XOR and why reusing a key is a mistake
- Hashes: what they are for and why passwords are stored as hashes
- Public-key encryption explained with small numbers
- Writing short Python scripts to automate decoding
Projects You Build
- Cryptography challenge set solved on a practice platform, with a written solution for each
Practice & Assignments
Solve five cryptography challenges and explain the weakness each one relied on
Topics Covered
- File signatures and why a file's name can lie about its type
- Metadata in images and documents
- Hidden data and simple steganography
- Searching files and disk images for strings
- Packet captures as evidence: following a conversation in Wireshark
- Keeping a clean record of what was found and how
Projects You Build
- Forensics challenge set solved on a practice platform, with a written solution for each
Practice & Assignments
Solve five forensics challenges and write the tool and the clue that cracked each one
Assessment
Month 5 check: a timed mixed cryptography and forensics set with written solutions
Topics Covered
- Reading short Python and C programs to work out what they do
- Reverse engineering basics: understanding a program without its source
- How web applications trust input, and how input validation fixes that
- Injection and cross-site scripting explained with the defender's fix: parameterised queries and output encoding
- Memory safety: what a buffer overflow is and how bounds checking prevents it
- Practising only on the platform's purpose-built challenges, never on real sites or programs
Projects You Build
- Bug and fix notebook: for each practice challenge, the bug, how it was recognised and the code change that would fix it
Practice & Assignments
Solve three reading-code challenges and write the fix for each bug found
Topics Covered
- Competition strategy: reading every challenge, taking the quick points first
- Team play in a CTF: splitting categories and sharing notes
- When to use a hint and when to move on
- Writing clear solutions after the event
- Responsible disclosure: what to do if you ever find a real vulnerability
- Where to keep practising: free platforms built for students
Projects You Build
- Mock CTF on an instructor-built challenge set, followed by a polished solution portfolio
Practice & Assignments
Write up your three favourite challenges from the course as portfolio pieces
Assessment
Final assessment: mock CTF performance, the hardening and solution portfolio, and a short ethics conversation
Projects You'll Build
Build a professional portfolio with 10 defensive artifacts: checklists, audits, team reviews and written CTF solutions real-world projects.
Weekly Learning Structure
Certification & Recognition
Technologies & Skills You'll Master
Comprehensive coverage of the entire modern web development stack.
Support & Resources
Career Outcomes & Opportunities
Transform your career with industry-ready skills and job placement support.
Prerequisites
Who Is This Course For?
Career Paths After Completion
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Straight answers about Cybersecurity Competitions for Teens: picoCTF and CyberPatriot Prep
- Who should take this course?
- Beginner to intermediate, ages 13 to 18, no prior security experience needed. It suits students on, or joining, a school or club cyberpatriot team who want stronger individual skills to bring to it; teens who have heard of picoctf or capture-the-flag events and want a structured start; students who enjoy codes, logic and detective work.
- What will they learn and build?
- Student cybersecurity competitions come in two main shapes, and this course prepares for both. CyberPatriot, the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air & Space Forces Association, runs the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, in which teams of middle and high school students find and fix security vulnerabilities in virtual Windows and Linux systems and are scored on how secure they make them.
- How deeply are topics covered?
- The course runs 6 months (24 weeks) at 2 live classes/week + 2-3 hours practice, across 3 phases listed week by week in the syllabus below. A structured, well-paced curriculum taught step by step, with hands-on lab work in every session.
- Who teaches it?
- Modern Age Coders mentors, who teach the live classes themselves. You can watch them at work in the free class recordings before you decide.
- How do practice, feedback and assessment work?
- Classwork every session, a lab task after every class, monthly reviews that mix in earlier topics, and a final assessment that decides the certificate. Doubt support between classes over WhatsApp, so you are never left stuck. A certificate you earn by passing the final assessment, with a free retest after revision if needed.
- What does it cost?
- Three monthly plans: a group batch, a mini batch and 1-on-1. Prices are shown in your currency in the plans section. Monthly billing, cancel any time.
- When can classes take place?
- Live classes are scheduled around your week. Group batches meet at a fixed weekly slot; 1-on-1 students choose their own. International students are scheduled in their own timezone. Ask on WhatsApp for the current slots.
- Can I watch the teaching before deciding?
- Yes. Full recordings of real 13 and up classes are free to watch, free with a Google sign-in. These recordings show how we teach, not the exact syllabus of this course. Some classes are in English and some in Hindi; everyone follows at their own pace. Watch a class end to end, like you are in it. Sessions are interactive and each moment builds on the last.
- Can I enroll without a live demo?
- Yes. Choose a plan on this page and enrol directly; a demo is not required. If you would like to see a full class with a mentor first, book a Priority Demo.
- How do I reach you with a question?
- WhatsApp +91 91233 66161, email connect@modernagecoders.com, or call +91 91233 66161. Tell us the student's age and what they have learned so far, and we will point you to the right plan and batch.
Common Questions About Cybersecurity Competitions for Teens: picoCTF and CyberPatriot Prep
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Read ArticleReady to start Cybersecurity Competitions for Teens: picoCTF and CyberPatriot Prep?
Book a Priority Demo to see a full live class with a mentor reserved for you, today or tomorrow. Or choose a plan and enrol now.
Questions? WhatsApp +91 91233 66161 or email connect@modernagecoders.com