Second Annual Lesotho National Cybersecurity Hackathon 2025 — A Huge Success!
The Internet Society Lesotho Chapter, in collaboration with the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA), proudly hosted the second annual National Cybersecurity Hackathon from 5 to 7 November 2025. Registration opened in September and drew an overwhelming response: 32 teams of four (128 participants in total) signed up via the ISOC Lesotho Chapter's social media platforms. Gender inclusion was strongly encouraged, and it was fantastic to see so many diverse and women-led teams take part.
For a full week in September, all 32 teams competed in online pre-qualifiers on the next-generation Capture the Flag (CTF) platform generously provided by the African Forum of Computer Emergency Response Teams (AfricaCERT), a partner to the hackathon and a nonprofit founded to provide leadership on cybersecurity issues in Africa.
Challenges spanned OSINT, cryptography, reverse engineering, signals intelligence, web exploitation, forensics, and more — with difficulty from easy to extremely tough. After an intense battle on the leaderboard, the top 10 teams (40 participants) advanced to the national finals. The main event ran from 5 to 7 November 2025, timed alongside the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Cyber Drill. On 5 November the finalists tackled a fresh set of online CTF challenges; on 6 November everyone gathered in person at Durham Link for the social engineering and attack-and-defense rounds. When the dust settled:
- The combined Attack-and-Defense and Social Engineering category was dominated by a single team: Intra31 from the National University of Lesotho.
- In the CTF track, four teams stood on the podium, led by ShadowGrid from Botho University in first place.
The grand awards ceremony took place on 7 November at Avani Maseru, during the SADC Cyber Drill closing event, attended by over 200 people — including representatives from the Ministry of Information, Communications, Science, Technology and Innovation, SADC, local tech companies, and academia.
Prizes were bigger and better than ever
- First place CTF was team ShadowGrid from Botho University. The prize package comprised laptops from LCA and corporate gifts from Revenue Services Lesotho (RSL).
- Second place was team Intra31 from NUL. The prize package included tablets and power banks from LCA plus RSL gifts.
- Third place was team AionPi from NUL.
- Fourth place was Maluti Guardian from NUL. The third- and fourth-place prizes consisted of mousepads, mice, headphones plus RSL gifts.
- Attack-and-Defense winners were team Intra31, who won Samsung smartphones sponsored by Econet Telecom Lesotho.
- Social Engineering special prize — an M3,000 Game gift voucher — went to Intra31.
- Overall best individual performer, Lemohang Khaile (a final-year student from Botho University), won a 3-month internship at Global IT.
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who made this possible — LCA (title sponsor), Econet Telecom Lesotho, Global IT, RSL, and AfricaCERT. Together, we are keeping the Internet trustworthy, reliable, and secure for the future!
Official Co-organiser
Internet Society
Lesotho Chapter
Sponsors
