Building Hardware Flags for WICC 2026
We were delighted to be one of the community organisations supporting the Women’s International Cybersecurity Challenge 2026 , held at St Laurence’s on TU Dublin’s Grangegorman Campus on 9 and 10 July. WICC brought together teams of women cybersecurity competitors from Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas for two days of technical competition, collaboration and international networking. Fifteen ESP8266 hardware flags As part of TOG’s contribution to the event, we built 15 hardware flags for use during the Capture the Flag competition. Each flag was based around an ESP8266 board and housed in a custom 3D-printed case. The finished devices were prepared and tested at TOG before being brought to TU Dublin for the competition. The different cases featured a range of coloured designs, helping turn the electronics into distinctive physical flags for the competitors to find and interact with. WICC’s Capture the Flag competition included challenges across areas such as cryptography, reverse engineering, digital forensics, web exploitation, binary exploitation, hardware security and open-source intelligence. Building physical devices for a cybersecurity competition was a great example of the overlap between making, electronics, programming, 3D printing and cybersecurity that we regularly see at TOG. Thank you, Ambrose A huge thank you goes to Ambrose for all their work building, printing, assembling and preparing the flags. Getting 15 devices ready for an international competition takes a significant amount of careful work, and it was fantastic to see them in use at the event. Thank you also to Zero Days for running WICC and inviting TOG to be part of it. Zero Days runs Capture the Flag competitions and cybersecurity challenges in Ireland, helping participants develop their skills through practical and engaging technical challenges. Events such as WICC demonstrate how community organisations, universities and industry can work together to create practical and engaging opportunities for people to develop technical skills. You can learn more about the Women’s International Cybersecurity Challenge at wicc.ie .