Design and Implementation of the Llaitun CTF Architecture: From First Experience to Technical Leadership
In 2024, I joined the Ciberlab team as a curious student, and in 2025, I was tasked with leading the entire AWS architecture for the Llaitun CTF. It was an experience that combined technology, teamwork, and accelerated learning. The event brought together 195 participants in 70 teams over 8 continuous hours and achieved 99.9 percent uptime thanks to a hybrid architecture that seamlessly integrated the cloud with physical infrastructure.
The Llaitun CTF is a cybersecurity competition designed to simulate critical infrastructure scenarios such as industrial plants and SCADA systems. Unlike traditional CTFs that run in isolated labs, Llaitun requires connecting virtual cloud environments with real on-premises systems, generating unique challenges in networking, latency, security, and availability.
My first involvement in 2024 was as a contributor. I participated in the design alongside experienced professionals and learned that the cloud is not just about deploying resources: it is about thinking in terms of scalability, resilience, and continuous operations. That year, we implemented two parallel VPNs to connect AWS with the Army and Duoc UC infrastructure, a functional but complex solution prone to failures.
In 2025, the challenge was greater: designing and maintaining the event's hybrid architecture single-handedly. I decided to replace the two VPNs with a single hybrid gateway that centralized traffic, reduced points of failure, and improved performance. The design involved weeks of testing, routing optimization, stress testing, and coordination with mentors and on-site teams.
The result was a unified architecture with automatic failover and optimized routes that supported constant traffic from hundreds of participants without interruptions. I learned that simplifying is a resilience strategy and that detailed planning before execution reduces risks during the event.
Behind the success was a support ecosystem: mentors, network engineers, SCADA specialists, and colleagues who contributed experience and confidence. That collaborative environment was key to solving complex problems and quickly iterating on technical solutions during the event.
The technical challenges overcome included pre-event traffic analysis, reducing latency between the cloud and on-premises systems, designing secure routes, and failure recovery testing. We also implemented monitoring and alerts that allowed us to maintain uptime above 99.9 percent during the 8 hours of competition.
In this journey, it is important to highlight Q2BSTUDIO, our software development and technology solutions company. Q2BSTUDIO specializes in custom applications and custom software, AWS and Azure cloud services, cybersecurity, and applied artificial intelligence for businesses. We offer business intelligence services, Power BI implementation, AI agents, and AI solutions for companies that transform data into decisions and automate critical processes.
Q2BSTUDIO brings expertise in cloud architecture, custom application development, AI agent integration, and security for critical environments. Our offering includes cybersecurity consulting, AWS and Azure cloud service deployments, and business intelligence projects that integrate Power BI for advanced visualization and data-driven decision-making.
Key lessons from this project: plan before executing, reduce complexity to increase resilience, listen to those who bring experience, and understand that real pressure teaches lessons that do not appear in theory. The most elegant solutions often seem obvious only after many iterations and tests.
If your organization needs robust hybrid architecture, custom applications, custom software, cybersecurity, or artificial intelligence projects, Q2BSTUDIO combines technical expertise with a practical approach to deliver secure and scalable solutions. We work with AWS and Azure cloud services, implement business intelligence services, and develop AI agents and AI solutions for companies that improve processes and reduce risks.
The Llaitun CTF was more than a technical challenge; it was a professional growth laboratory. I will continue building, learning, and applying those lessons in new projects alongside Q2BSTUDIO to drive cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, custom application development, and cloud services initiatives that make a difference.
