BunkyoWesterns from Japan has claimed victory in the attack-defense finals of Kaspersky's Security Analyst Summit (SAS) CTF 2026. The winners outpaced 13 finalist teams from around the world in a 24-hour battle for the $18,000 prize pool.
Designed to sharpen cybersecurity skills and strengthen global cybersecurity talent, the SAS CTF 2026 finals, brought together the winners of two competitions – the SAS CTF online qualifiers and Kaspersky{CTF} - both completed earlier in the year. Together, the two tournaments drew in more than 2,800 teams and had 14 finalist teams representing Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and North America.
At this year finals, top cybersecurity talent faced-off in a tense real-time hacking duel, simultaneously defending their own servers while exploiting identical vulnerabilities on rival teams' systems. Scores weren't just about who hacked the most; uptime mattered too, with each team's results multiplied by how well they kept their own services running under pressure. One of the most interesting challenges was a brand-new experiment: an isolated network without AI agents and internet access. Each team had to solve the task using only their own skills and do it manually.
BunkyoWesterns participated for the third time in SAS CTF and this time claimed the top spot and a $10,000 prize. The second place went to Kaspersky{CTF} finalists – PwnSec (the Middle East) with $5,000, and third place was awarded to CUT (Russia) – newcomers from Central University, who took home $3,000.
“This is the third time we played SAS CTF as BankyoWesterns and we are really happy to finally win the CTF,” comments the captain of the BunkyoWesterns team. “At first, CTF was about using AI to attack each other, and it was much fiercer compared to last year, as AI tools were capable of finding bugs very quickly. However, the second half of the competitions reveled the limits of AI: certain bugs still required manual analysis and we had to analyze them by hand. We are definitely coming back next year! “
“SAS CTF 2026 showed us something important: even in an era where AI tools are becoming part of every security researcher's toolkit, there's no substitute for genuine human expertise under pressure. AI can suggest a path forward, but it can't replace the years of hands-on experience and critical thinking our participants demonstrated this year. As AI becomes a bigger part of the cybersecurity landscape, events like SAS CTF remain an important training ground for human talent that will ultimately decide how these tools are used,”comments Leonid Bezvershenko, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky GReAT.
The finals were sponsored by Kaspersky Academy and held as part of the 18th annual SAS, taking place October 20-23, 2026, in Bali. The conference gathered over 200 participants from around the globe, with this year's agenda featuring critical vulnerability disclosures and incident investigations into highly complex attacks targeting multiple digital sectors.
To find out more about the SAS 2026, its agenda and speakers, visit https://thesascon.com.
