Published on: 2026-10-13
Source: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
The St. Petersburg cybersecurity festival NeoQUEST-2026 was held in the cultural quarter “Third Place”, organized for the 14th time by the Higher School of Cybersecurity of SPbPU. The venue was visited by more than 400 guests: students, novice and experienced information security specialists, researchers, and industry representatives.
NeoQUEST has been held since 2012 and combines a Capture The Flag hacker tournament with a practical information security conference. The competition consists of three stages: online qualification, an on-site round continuing the CTF with presentations and master classes, and a night tournament for the finalists. NeoQUEST is organized by the Higher School of Cybersecurity of the IKNK SPbPU with the support of partner companies — “NeoBIT” and “STC”.
For many guests, the meeting was a return to their alma mater: some speakers and organizers studied at the Higher School of Cybersecurity at different times. The conference was opened by the polytechnic Ilya Afanasyev. In the report “How to get to the sea,” he explained how to convince a phone that it is on an island in the middle of the sea, and demonstrated one of the methods of location spoofing in laboratory conditions. Daniil Morozov (“Sovcombank Technologies”) in the report “Rescue Throw from Model DoS” spoke about “sponge” attacks on large language models and showed how to build a layered defense for an LLM service. Simar Muratov (“SBER”) presented practical experience transitioning from reactive log analysis to proactive infrastructure monitoring based on a unified mathematical representation of data.
The central event of the day was the round table “AI Soap Bubble.” Two teams — “Base Models” (experienced specialists) and “Generative AI” (young researchers with a fresh perspective) — discussed where the technological revolution ends and the myth about it begins.
The second part of the conference began with a presentation by polytechnic Artem Tarutin. In the report “Through Thorns to Offshore,” he traced the path of stolen cryptocurrency funds from the hack to an attempt to withdraw them on a centralized exchange and showed how to reconstruct the route using blockchain public data. Nikita Moskalev and Stepan Kapranov (“RusBITech-Astra”) demonstrated, using go modules as an example, how to automate fuzz testing and integrate it into CI/CD. The program was concluded by Kamila Musina (“Yandex 360”). In her report “Bug Accepted,” she explained, with examples of real reports, what happens after a researcher submits a vulnerability and analyzed a fixed bug.
The key activity was the individual hacker competition (CTF) “Land Without Connection.” Its participants were transported to the year 2190, where humanity is fighting a mysterious virus, and in order to create a vaccine, they needed to infiltrate the Biophysics Institute on Liteyny. Every step demanded new skills from the competitors — steganography, cryptography, OSINT, geo-analysis, reverse engineering, and working with artificial intelligence.
The CTF organizer, lecturer at VSHK IKNC, Ambrosiy Bolokan said: “The plot and tasks were designed as a single whole: each task is tied to a specific point in the heroes’ route — from the command center in Korolyov to the strain storage on Liteyny Prospect. The initial stages are based on steganography and OSINT and allow participants to enter the game. Then the complexity increases: at the ‘Gostiny Dvor’ station, it was necessary to figure out the control system of a robotic dog; this task represents a synthesis of all possible CTF categories. The most difficult was the ‘SISIZ Kassandra’ cycle: five tasks dedicated to artificial intelligence systems, in which protection becomes more complex at each level.”
At the same time, practical zones were operating on the site. Polytechnic Pavel Zhuravlyov conducted a master class “What’s in your soul, speaker?”, where participants disassembled an IoT device and searched the board for debugging interfaces. Independent researcher and author of the “CTF Write-ups” channel Nikita Petrov held a lockpicking master class. In the “Resident Neo” quest by Mikhail Mikhailov, guests went through five challenges set in the village scenery from Resident Evil Village, and at the “Tame the Dog” booth, it was necessary to bypass the robo-dog’s protection before the “changed ones” reached it.
“There are many events dedicated to cybersecurity, but they are mainly focused on business. NeQUEST is primarily organized for students and young professionals, – noted the project leader, senior lecturer at the Higher School of Cybersecurity of SPbPU, Anna Selivanova. We talk about how the information security sector works from the inside, showing how interesting and exciting it is to explore new cybersecurity technologies. It is important to us that alumni participate in such events: their activity proves that the Higher School of Cybersecurity trains specialists capable of working in leading companies in the country and always ready to cooperate with their alma mater. At NeoQUEST, alumni of the Polytechnic Institute’s IBKS, working in leading positions at Sberbank, Sovcombank, Positive Technologies, the Special Technology Center, Digital Security, and many other companies, came. This year we barely managed to accommodate all those interested and closed registration almost a week before the event. The youth’s interest in cybersecurity is only growing, and we will continue to expand the format further.
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