Global Cybersecurity Camp 2025

Intro

Last year I went to GCC’24 Thailand as one of the Vietnamese students (I also have a blog about it here). This time, I came back to GCC’25 Taiwan as the only staff for the Vietnamese (we did not have one last time 💀).

For this edition, Vietnam sent 3 students to participate in the main event and fully sponsored them. I got partial cover for my accommodation so I only had to pay for my flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Taoyuan City.

I will try to not making any comparisons between the two editions of GCC’24 and GCC’25. Also, since I did not have much time to attend the classes, I will be sharing more about the actual trip to Taiwan rather than the content of this year GCC.

Anyways, information about GCC’25 Taiwan can be found here.

Accommodation

It took me ~15 minutes to go from Taoyuan Int’l Airport to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (A8) Station by Airport MRT. One ticket for a single trip cost 60NT$ ~ around 1.8$.

Our accommodation were already booked at Fullon Hotel Taoyuan Airport. The hotel had an entrance inside Global Mall on 2F, which was also the same floor with the exit of the MRT station.

I arrived so late (it was 22:45 when I reached the hotel) that I missed the 18:00 - 21:00 ice-breaking party of the event 😭

My room was a two-bed at the price of 350$/person for 5 days. It was pretty big (that later served as the party room for us 💀) and my roommate was one of the three staffs from India, Abhinand.

Also, I really like the idea of them putting water dispensers in some public closets for each floor instead of water bottles inside each rooms.

Training venue

The training venue for the main event is located near the hotel, with a short 8-minute-walk distance. It was on the second floor of Taoyuan Chang Gung Bus Terminal, which had underground amenities and an underground link to the nearby Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.

GCC souvenir

Upon arriving at the training venue, we were all given a custom-made tumbler. Besides, I was also given a staff card.

I also heard that if we used the tumbler to buy drinks, we would get a discount (but I never tried 💀).

GCC contents

Here are some explanation about Global Cybersecurity Camp for readers that have not yet participated in GCC before:

• Lectures are conducted everyday from Monday to Thursday, from 09:00 till ~18:00 (with lunch and breaks in between).
• Students are divided into several (optimally, 8) groups. A group has 5-6 students with different nationalities.
• Four groupwork projects are assigned to the groups (so each topic will be assigned to 2 groups). Evaluation and judgement is made on Friday.

This year, we were presented with 7 different lectures, arranged properly throughout the week.

And for the groupwork projects, these were the topics and their requirements:

1. Quantum Security

• Discover different quantum computing tools (e.g., Qiskit SDK).
• Create a sample Quantum Computing Application.
  • Show how security threats can affect it.
  • Show how to protect against them.

2. SSO Tracker: Manage Your Logins at a Glance

• Track and manage SSO (Single Sign-On) login history.
• Easily check which SSO was used for each service.
• View granted permissions and linked account status at a glance.
• Enhance security management and remove unnecessary accounts.

3. Robot Security

• Find an online simulator based on ROS and develop a simple task for a robot.
• Analyse cybersecurity problems with the sample robotic task and suggest how to secure it.

4. AI-based ICS Incident Investigation System

• Analyse malicious or abnormal traffic in ICS environment or traffic recording pcap.
• Import AI module to support multiple ICS protocol for different environments.
• Fine tune AI module for traffic analysing.
• Use AI to automate attacks on ICS.

The groups with Quantum Security and SSO Tracker won the joint first place. Huge congrats to the students!

Cuisine

(I did not save the location of these restaurants, and it was a nightmare trying to OSINT some of the names while I was writing this section 💀)

To be honest I only tried some of the nearby restaurants since we had limited time for our meals, but anyways here were some of the dishes.

This one was at 三商巧福 on B1F of the bus terminal. The combo consisted of Taiwanese-style beef tendon noodle, stewed pork ear and one coke for 219 NT$ ~ 6.8$. Despite the high price, I think it tasted quite good, especially the beef tendon.

I had this for dinner on Monday, this one was at 敝姓鍋, which was directly to the left of Global Mall 2F entrance. This was actually the first time I ever tried single-serving hotpot, and this one was somewhere around 330 NT$ - 10$. I really liked the freshness of the veggies, but the beef was a little bit too fatty.

An extra point for this restaurant was that they served sweetened black tea on the self-service counter, and I really enjoyed that.

This Truedan 85 NT$ ~ 2.6$ Brown Sugar Bubble with Milk was the only boba I had during the whole stay in Taiwan (should have tried more 😭). I chose 50% ice and 3/6 sugar, and it was totally awesome.

This was from a small takeaway corner of a restaurant named 六合客家麵食館 which had the 外帯區 - takeaway sign. We did not know the main staff for this vendor was Vietnamese until we started to argue in Vietnamese when no one understood what the menu displayed 💀

Anyways, I paid 120 NT$ - 3.7$ for a box of rice, veggies and a seasoned drumstick. The rice and veggies was normal but the drumstick was surely an 11/10. I wonder if I could recreate the dressing of it just from my own taste 😭.

For one of the dinners, I had this oyakodon for 160 NT$ - 4.9$ in 永豐堂料理店 - just a few steps away from the previous vendor. I really like the fact that they arranged a corner for free miso soup, and the oyakodon was delicious too.

This 150 NT$ - 4.6$ beef curry rice was at 金園排骨 under the training venue. The serving style was different - this was actually the first time I had seen rice and curry being separately served, but nonetheless the curry had a very interesting taste.

I had this for lunch at 巧竹. I think this one was 135 NT$ - 4.1$, which was a fairly reasonable price. The dish tasted good, but if I could change anything, it would be to reduce the greasiness by adjusting the seasonings.

Finally, here is my overall ranking table for each of the meals I tried in Taiwan - excluding breakfasts because those were included within the accommodation.

City tour

This year, several hours on Friday afternoon were allocated for a tour within the city, in that participants could pre-register and decide which option to take between National Palace Museum and Taipei 101.

So, which option did I choose?

### National Palace Museum

Option A

National Palace Museum

### Taipei 101

Option B

Taipei 101

Random things

Closing party

After the city tour, we all joined a closing party at Le Ble d’Or in Taipei Miramar.

But before that, we had like an hour to go around the mall and enjoy the scenery.

Okay, time’s up. Time for the closing party!

To be honest, I was really tempted to wander around and chit-chat with everyone, so I did not take many pictures of the actual servings, but here were some of them.

The real highlight of our closing party turned out to be the karaoke session. We had a blast singing songs from all over the world and dancing the night away!

Even the big guys joined as well 💀

Following the earlier closing ceremony, the party served as the unofficial send-off for GCC’25 Taiwan 😭

The end?

Every journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the end of this journey holds the seed of new dreams. Yes, we are proud to announce that: Next year GCC’26 will be held in Vietnam 🎊!

Having participated in both GCC’24 Thailand and GCC’25 Taiwan as different roles, I have learnt different things from different cultures. I hope we Vietnamese can adapt to the diversity and prepare well for the event next year, even though these guys already set a really high standard for us to match 💀

Psst, here is a little sneak peek on what Vietnam has to offer:

Anyways, see you all in GCC’26 Vietnam, as well as in other cybersecurity events!