Earlier this August, we had the opportunity to attend the WHY2025, a quadrennial nonprofit outdoors hacker camp taking place in the Netherlands.

WHY2025 (an acronym for What Hackers Yearn 2025) represents the 10th edition in a long-running series of outdoor, volunteer-driven hacker camps in the Netherlands, first launched in 1989, and organized every four years. Over the decades, these events have evolved from:

This time around we came prepared to hear and learn from the newest breakthroughs in the community.

This year's event brought together around 3,750 hackers and tech enthusiasts from about 50 countries, continuing the global scope of the community. Attendees engaged in hundreds of workshops, talks, hands-on activities, and village-style installations designed and run by volunteers themselves. WHY2025 was built on three pillars: knowledge sharing, technological exploration, and peer connection.

Tents and enclosed spaces hosted diverse programming from technical talks about infrastructure and cloud security, to creative projects blending art, hardware hacks, and unconventional interventions.

We are proud to be able to join this event as it shares so many of our company values as well as individual values of everyone involved in our project.

Phrack staff on stage at Why2025 celebrating 40 years of Phrack, a legendary hacker magazine in cybersecurity culture
SynScan.net corporate swag with custom shirts displayed at Why2025 cybersecurity event
Laptop and notebook with CTF challenge notes during Capture the Flag hacking competition at Why2025 cybersecurity event

Our Highlights

Celebrating 40 Years of Phrack

One of the standout moments was the celebration of the Phrack 40th anniversary. For anyone who grew up the scene, Phrack is legendary. It's a cornerstone of hacker culture, a publication that has been passing down knowledge, stories, and techniques for decades.

At Why2025, the Phrack crew gave a talk that was nothing short of fascinating; they covered a North Korean leak from an APT workstation. For those of us at synscan.net, this is exactly the kind of material we'll dig into, analyze, and parse into searchable breach intelligence. It felt special to sit there, watching history and cutting-edge research collide in one talk.

For us it is a demonstration of what Cyber Security grounds were built on, sharing, being curious and helping each other learn and keep growing. 40 years It's a deeply inspiring trajectory especially knowing it has impacted and inspired so many, including us.

The Capture the Flag

We got together with some friends and colleagues to join the Capture the Flag competition at ctf.why2025.org. We didn't go in with massive expectations; more of a “let's hack and have fun” mindset; but we ended up doing pretty well, finishing 88th out of 1,806. Not bad considering we tackled it in our spare time between wandering around talks and villages!

The challenges were creative, especially the physical ones, which pushed us out of our comfort zone and got us thinking differently. Those were some of the most fun to solve as a team. We took notes, wrote some write-ups, and collected everything in a Github repository that we just made public: https://github.com/arall/why2025-ctf

We always try and participate in these challenges as it open so many doors to learning new techniques and disciplines which overall serves greatly to better ourselves as professionals.

The Vibe and the Community

One of the things that make events like this special is the people. It serves as a meeting point for new people as well as old friends and colleagues that have been around for ages. Seeing some of them working as a part of the organization felt inspiring and it truly reminds you how even in distance this community it's so deeply interconnected.

The whole place had that unique “hacker camp” feel: tents and villages full of projects, demos, and experiments. We spent a lot of time just walking around, checking out what others were building, and soaking in the creativity. It's one of those rare spaces where curiosity is contagious, and everyone is willing to share what they're working on.

Looking Back

All in all, Why2025 was an incredible experience. Between the celebration of hacker history with Phrack, the thrill of the CTF, and the energy of the community. As always we left feeling inspired, with our spirits fully recharged. For us, the highlight was realizing how events like this bridge the past, present, and future of hacking. Seeing yourself reflected in the new generation as they grow up and find themselves in the community as well as the elders who have been around for decades and are still willing to learn and share their knowledge with others.

We are already looking forward to the next edition. Until then, we'll be diving deeper into all the knowledge we have acquired from the speakers and continue to share our findings at synscan.net.

Nighttime pyrotechnic show during the Why2025 cybersecurity event