Translation. Region: Russian Federal
Source: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
The NeoQUEST-2025 cybersecurity event took place in Brusnitsyn Hall. It is organized annually by the Institute of Computer Science and Cybersecurity at SPbPU with the support of partner companies. This year's event was particularly grand.
NeoQUEST traditionally consisted of three stages: an online CTF, a head-to-head contest with a CTF continuation and conference, and a night tournament for the finalists. In 2025, the head-to-head contest took place at Brusnitsyn Hall and attracted over 400 participants, including students and young professionals. In addition to the CTF, in which participants saved St. Petersburg from a mad scientist and solved problems involving OSINT, cryptography, reverse engineering, web, and forensic science, the audience listened to presentations from industry experts and attended master classes.
Polytechnician Yakov Sendov spoke first, explaining how to compile a profile of a specific individual using "harmless" web server logs and public data, and how to formalize the probability of such user deanonymization. Ilya Afanasyev, periodically speaking to the audience via a voice assistant, shared his experience using machine learning in side-channel attacks. Grigory Paguba, in a large master class, administered a polygraph test to those in the audience and explained its basic principles.
I've been participating in NeoQUEST since 2021. It gives me the opportunity to create something new and unusual, offering challenges that are not quite standard in my work. It inspires me to come up with new ideas. For example, at one of the conferences, my colleagues and I came up with the idea of trying to hack a polygraph. But that's certainly difficult, so we decided to hack a polygraph examiner—not a human, of course, but an AI one. The challenge seemed especially interesting given reports that neural networks detect lies better than human experts. Those who participated in our experiment and sat on the polygraph had the opportunity to fool it—with their breathing, movements, and heartbeat. Which is essentially what they did. Together, we came to the conclusion that machine learning is unlikely to replace both the polygraph itself and the profession of polygraph examiner anytime soon, shared long-time NeoQUEST participant and polytechnician Grigory Paguba.
In the second part of the event, independent researcher Nikita Tarakanov dissected Microsoft Windows security. Alexey Lyamkin (VK) explored bug bounty programs, why companies need them, and why they're of interest to security researchers. Anatoly Karpenko (Luntry) described how SBOM containers are built, how vulnerability scanners for Docker images work, and why you shouldn't always trust their results.
Alongside the main program, there were workshops on lockpicking and Wi-Fi, as well as a special workshop from STC. STC also prepared a special CryptoQuest for the audience, with questions about Alan Turing and asymmetric encryption. Prizes were awarded for all activities.
NeoQUEST has been held since 2012. This year, we expanded the venue to attract even more participants. The presentation area focused on trending topics, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning in cybersecurity. "We're striving to develop the event so students have the opportunity to directly interact with industry experts," explains Maria Reznikova, one of the event's organizers.
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