Red Hot Cyber
Cybersecurity, Cybercrime News and Vulnerability Analysis
In 2149, the world is no longer divided into nations, but into mega Autonomous City-States, hyper-technological urban giants competing for resources, data, and geopolitical power while the entire world is a desert.
The most feared of all is Vetrox Prime, a metropolis where the heart, the control center, is enclosed in a quantumly reinforced glass dome, built as both shield and prison.
For decades, Vetrox Prime has governed through fear: cyber infiltrations, electrical blackouts targeting rival cities, manipulation of civilian neural networks. The dome, called Aegis Sphere, is not just physical protection: it is also an urban firewall, a sphere of total isolation governed by VELOS7, the artificial intelligence that controls Vetrox Prime in its entirety.
Its Council, The Speculars, is known for cruelty and obsession with controlling and influencing every cybernetic resource present in the world. Many have tried to breach VELOS7, but no one has ever succeeded. Or at least… until now.
The Capture The Flag at the Red Hot Cyber Conference 2026 represents one of the most technical and stimulating moments of the entire event. An experience designed to test real skills in concrete scenarios, thanks to the collaboration between RHC and Hack The Box, a global reference point for advanced cybersecurity training.
Hack The Box is the leading AI-powered cybersecurity readiness and upskilling platform, trusted by 1,500+ organizations worldwide. Through gamified labs, live-fire simulations, and AI-driven intelligence, it helps teams build real-world offensive and defensive skills, enabling enteprises, government agencies, and MSSPs stregthen resilience at scale.
Hack The Box is the leading AI-powered cybersecurity readiness and upskilling platform, used by over 1,500 organizations worldwide – including Fortune 500 companies, government entities, and MSSPs – to build cyber resilience at scale. Through AI-powered intelligence, live-fire labs and simulations, Hack The Box has become one of the world’s largest cybersecurity communities, enabling teams to master offensive and defensive skills through real-world scenarios designed for the AI era.
In addition to Hack The Box, other organizations actively collaborating with Red Hot Cyber will also participate in the creation of the “flags in proximity.” These include:
Within the CTF at RHC Conference 2026, Hack The Box will provideits CTFtheofficial onlineplatform, which will allow participants to:
The online competition will be the heart of the technical experience and will include approximately 30 flags, divided by difficulty level:
Figure 2: The Aegis Sphere – A living digital organism where every node is controlled by VELOS7
Thechallengecategories will cover key areas such as Web Application Security, Microsoft Exchange, Malware Analysis, as well as otherdomainsscenarios currently under development. All challenges willsimulate realistic attack scenariosbe built on realistic enterprise environments, guaranteeing a high level of adherence to the skills required today of penetration testers, blue teamers, and security researchers.
Far away to the east, among mega organic skyscrapers that climb like roots of light and pulsating photonic power plants, rises Arkom Forge, the city-state symbol of digital freedom and rebellion.
Every district is a living and sustainable ecosystem: suspended bridges between green towers, luminous streets powered by clean energy, and drones patrolling the sky like silent guardians. Here life pulses to the rhythm of data, without forgetting that piece of GAIA on which the city rests that seems to breathe, a urban organism made of light and code, in perpetual harmony.
Within its walls, a clandestine elite of cyber warriors, known as the Black Fringe, has been observing Vetrox Prime’s moves for years. Silent as ghosts, they decipher data streams, intercept encrypted signals and monitor every manipulation attempt. They know that one day the right moment will come to strike, and that wait has made them implacable, patient and perfect in their role as guardians of digital freedom and defenders of GAIA.
When Vetrox Prime launches a massive attack on global communication infrastructures, threatening to collapse entire planetary networks and city-states. But Arkom Forge reacts, but not with bombs or explosives: with coded pulses and radio waves that penetrate enemy systems, the Black Fringe transforms cyberspace into an invisible battlefield. Every signal, every bit, becomes a weapon, and the war for the future of the city-states has finally begun.
Inside the Aegis Sphere pulses its artificial heart. It is not just a city: it is a totalitarian digital organism, where every streetlight, every dronobot, every telephone micro-antenna is part of an urban nervous system. All data flowing between organic skyscrapers, communication towers and IoT network command centers converge in the city’s central mind: VELOS7, the apex artificial intelligence that supervises, controls and issues orders, calculates and acts: it is omnipresent.
VELOS7 does not act alone. The Speculars orchestrate strategies, manipulate information flows and decide who must survive and who must fall. Every decision reverberates in telephone networks, automated transport, intelligent buildings, transforming the city into a living control machine.
Figure 3: Arkom Forge – The rebellious city-state rising in defiance of Vetrox Prime’s tyranny
The Black Fringe knows that breaching Vetrox Prime does not simply mean bypassing a firewall: it means confronting a hostile ecosystem, alive and reactive. Every penetration attempt alters the environment. Every exploit generates new defenses, as if the city itself breathed, thought, protected itself.
The paths to traverse are impossible labyrinths:
Figure 4: VELOS7 – The omnipresent artificial intelligence controlling every aspect of Vetrox Prime
And while the Black Fringe navigates through these obstacles, it understands that every node of the smart city, every IoT sensor, every telephone line, is a synapse of VELOS7, a vulnerable point only if you know how to read its signals.
Vetrox Prime is not just a city. It is a brain that adapts, a dark digital oracle, and every byte greedily stolen is a step towards its downfall.
Will you be ready to be a soldier of the Black Fringe?
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