picoCTF logo
  • Get Started
  • Learn
    Resources
    Community
    Primer
  • Practice
  • Compete
    Current and Upcoming Events
    Historical Competitions
  • About
    About picoCTF
    Sponsorship
    Contact Us
  • Log In
CMU logo

About picoCTF

pico logo

Putting education ahead of competition
The largest high school hacking competition now provides year-round cyber

pico categories

Participants learn to overcome sets of challenges from six domains of cybersecurity including general skills, cryptography, web exploitation, forensics, etc. The challenges are all set up with the intent of being hacked, making it an excellent, legal way to get hands-on experience.

Our history

pico timeline

Our Research

Research Vision

Big Learning, Small Challenges

If we cannot make learning cybersecurity easy, then we will make it fun.

Past Papers
  • pico-Boo!: How to avoid scaring students away in a CTF competition (2019)
  • Automatic Problem Generation for Capture-the-Flag Competitions (2015)
  • picoCTF: A Game-Based Computer Security Competition for High School Students (2014)
  • picoCTF: Teaching 10,000 High School Students to Hack (2013)
  • picoCTF 2013 - Toaster Wars: When interactive storytelling game meets the largest computer security competition (2013)
Learn More

Open Source Development

picoCTF is an open source project. We’re welcoming to any comments and contributions!

Visit Github Repo

Who we are

Megan Kearns photo Megan Kearns Program Director
no-photo Ivan Liang Research Programmer, Game/UX Lead
Luke Jones Luke Jones Software Engineer, Education Lead
no-photo Dustin Martin Software Engineer, Technical Lead

Faculty Advisors

no-photo Lorrie Cranor CyLab Director
David Brumley photo David Brumley Founder
no-photo Hanan Hibshi Research Advisor
Maverick Woo photo Maverick Woo Technical Director

Carnegie Mellon University

Michael Cunningham Communications Lead
Michael Lisanti Sponsorship Lead
Jason Griess Sponsorships
Isabelle Glassmith Sponsorships
Danyel Kusbit Sponsorships
no-photo Alejandro Cuevas Villalba Graduate Research Assistant
no-photo Arjun Brar Graduate Research Assistant IoT
no-photo Weijia Yan Outreach
no-photo Jiin Jeong Outreach
no-photo Ariana Mims Education Dev
no-photo Pavani Mogili Education Dev
no-photo Jay Bosamiya Problem Writer
no-photo Palash Oswal Problem writer
no-photo Josh Inscoe Problem Writer
no-photo Robert Chen Problem Writer
no-photo Will Hong Problem Writer
no-photo Geoffrey Njogu Problem Writer
no-photo Mubarak Mikail Problem Writer
no-photo Neel Bhavsar Problem Writer
no-photo Anish Singhani Problem Writer
no-photo Zach Wade Alumni, Problem Writer
no-photo Jeffery John Problem Writer
  • Doug Sicker: CyLab Director / Faculty Advisor
  • Martin Carlisle: Education Director
  • Hannah Pearson: Graduate Research Assistant
  • Kentrell Owens: Research Assistant
  • Antonio Martorana: Research Assistant
  • Suma Thota: Outreach
  • Raga Chandrasekar: Outreach
  • Mike Annichiarico: Technical Advisor
  • Alex Fulton Problem: Development Lead
  • Daniel Tunitis: Problem Development Lead
  • Sanjay Chandrasekaran: Education & Problem Developer
  • Archit Agarwal: Problem Developer/Education Team RA
  • Joonjae Bang: Problem Developer
  • Alex Bushkin: Problem Developer
  • Santiago Carvajal: Problem Developer
  • Kevin Cooper: Problem Developer
  • John Davis: Problem Developer
  • Julio De La Cruz Natera: Problem Developer
  • Rachel Eaton: Problem Developer
  • Austin Gadient: Problem Developer
  • John Hammond: Problem Developer
  • Mark Haase: Problem Developer
  • Chris Hensler: Problem Developer
  • John Johnson: Problem Developer
  • Jason Lee: Problem Developer
  • Austin McWhirter: Problem Developer
  • Nathan Montierth: Problem Developer
  • Thomas Nguyen: Problem Developer
  • Xingyang Pan: Problem Developer
  • Bill Parks: Problem Developer
  • Jenish Rakholiya: Problem Developer
  • Sam S.: Problem Developer
  • Zach Wade: Problem Developer
  • Wai Tuck Wong: Problem Developer
  • Carolina Zarate: Problem Developer
  • Victoria Zheng: Problem Developer
  • Claude Zou: Problem Developer
  • Sam Dlinn: Problem Developer
  • Michael F.: Problem Developer
  • Rintaro Fujita: Problem Developer
  • Everett Montano: Problem Developer
  • Corwin de Boor: Problem Developer
  • Sam Damashek: Problem Developer
  • Matt Savage: Problem Developer
  • Carson Sestili: Problem Developer
  • Val Choung: Problem Developer
  • Tingru(Tina) Lian: Producer, Programmer
  • Haoze(Jacky) Sun: Programmer
  • Shiyong(Sion) Chen: Game Designer, Programmer
  • Ziqi(Snow) Ye: Artist
  • Jingyu(Jerry) Xie: Game Designer, Sound Designer, Programmer
  • Jeffrey Liu: Game Designer / Co-producer, Game Development
  • Shicai He: Co-producer / Programmer / Artist, Game Development
  • Tiange Zhou: Game Designer / 2D Artist, Game Development
  • Yiming Xiao: Programmer/ Game Designer / Tech Artist, Game Development
  • Lewis Koh: Producer, Game Development
  • Josh Li: Co-Producer / Designer, Game Development
  • Tianying Lyu: UI/UX Designer / Artist, Game Development
  • Jeesub Lee: Programmer, Game Development
  • Oscar Huang: Programmer, Game Development
  • Jiadai He: Co-producer, Programmer
  • Lianzheng Luo: Co-producer, Game Development
  • Andrew McLamb: Game Designer, Game Development
  • Chonghui Sun: Programmer, Game Development
  • Tianheng Sun: Game Team
  • Muzi Wang: Game Team
  • Magian Li: Producer, Game Development
  • Tina Han: Artist & Writer, Game Development
  • Max Hsieh: Lead Programmer, Game Development / Research Assistant
  • Brian Teng: Lead Designer, Game Development
  • Peilin Li: Producer
  • Rajat Gupta: Designer
  • Guangya Niu: Artist
  • Himanshu Telkikar: Programmer
  • Yu (Lotus) Li: Programmer
  • Ramya Sriraman: Programmer
  • Daniel Tkacik: Social Media
  • Alaina Duty: Social Media
  • Yaamika Dedhia: Tech Team Research Assistant
  • Aaron Mortenson: Tech Team Research Assistant
CMU Logo INI Logo CyLab Logo PPP Logo
Facebook logo Twitter logo Discord logo
© Carnegie Mellon University 2025
Use of this site is governed by the Privacy Statement and Terms of Service.