[SCAN 2026 Final Interview] ⑫ Lv1x: Malaysian Cybersecurity Students Challenge the Final Stage

The finals of the world's first virtual asset (digital asset) tracking competition, 'SCAN 2026', will be held on September 28 at 9 AM at Monaco Space in Seocho-gu, Seoul.

SCAN 2026 was established to enhance cybersecurity and investigative capabilities in digital assets and is hosted by digital asset information company DAsset, with global blockchain data platform Chainalysis participating as a CTF (Capture The Flag) partner.

The finals will feature the top 20 teams from the preliminary round (a total of 416 teams, 754 participants).

DAsset conducted written interviews with teams composed of global law enforcement agencies, security experts, and university students who advanced to the finals.

*The teams that made it to the finals are as follows. (In alphabetical order)

0xfun / 1nf1n1ty / 67 / BITSkrieg / CertiScan / DeFiHackLabs / EDCCS / Funds Went to Kerning City / hello / IBarelyKnowHer / J0y_B0y / lazarus2026 / Lv1x / Project Sekai / T34M1 / Tardigrades / Tornado Cats / youtiaos / Upside Academia / Chaos of KAOS

Q. What motivated you to form this team, and what backgrounds and expertise do your team members have?

"We are all studying the same degree program in Computer Science (Cybersecurity major) at Asia Pacific University (APU) in Malaysia, and we formed the team while participating in CTF (Capture The Flag) competitions together.

Tong Yixin is the team leader who covers all areas, but his favorite field is forensics. Hong Rui enjoys reverse engineering and binary exploitation. Tan Jie Cheng is responsible for cryptography, particularly favoring RSA, a public key encryption method. Ku Min Zi also enjoys the forensics field."

Q. You advanced to the finals after passing the preliminary round with 416 teams participating. How do you feel about reaching the finals, and what was the most memorable moment during the preliminary round?

"We are all really happy to have made it to the finals. Especially for Ku Min Zi and Tan Jie Cheng, this is their first time advancing to the finals of an international competition.

The most memorable moment in the preliminaries was when we confirmed that we were among the top 20 teams after solving a series of problems, and we all celebrated together."

Q. What was the most difficult problem or situation you faced while solving the SCAN 2026 preliminary problems? How did you approach and solve the problem?

"The most challenging problem for our team was Challenge 8. This problem required us to track the flow of funds on both Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Unlike tracking transactions within a single blockchain, there were no common transaction hashes or addresses that directly linked Ethereum deposit transactions to corresponding Bitcoin withdrawal transactions. Therefore, we had to comprehensively analyze the timing and amount of transactions, the nature of the services used, and subsequent fund movements to uncover the relationship between the two transactions.

During the investigation, we also utilized AI for analysis. AI helped interpret unfamiliar transaction structures, develop and improve data parsing scripts, organize possible tracking hypotheses, and identify areas that required further validation."

Q. What tools, technologies, and analytical methods did your team use for on-chain data analysis and fund flow tracking? If you developed any programs or analytical methods, please share them as well.

"Our team relied heavily on AI for much of the analysis work, but we also utilized public blockchain RPC endpoints and block explorers.

For example, in the Solana-based problem, we used standard JSON-RPC and Web3 API functions such as 'getSignaturesForAddress' and 'getTransaction'. In particular, using 'getSignaturesForAddress' allowed us to retrieve a list of confirmed transaction signatures related to a specific wallet or account address in reverse chronological order, which greatly aided our analysis."

Q. What do you think is your team's greatest strength or unique problem-solving approach?

"I believe our greatest strength is a combination of curiosity, perseverance, and a willingness to learn. We are a team of individuals passionate about cybersecurity, and we enjoy understanding not just how things work, but why they work that way.

Additionally, when we encounter difficult problems, we do not give up even if our initial attempts do not succeed. We revisit our assumptions, change our approaches, and continue to challenge ourselves until we find a solution in collaboration with our team members."

Q. What preparations are you making ahead of the finals?

"We are writing up the problems from the preliminary round and reviewing them together with our team members to understand each other's solutions and perspectives.

We are also continuously participating in other CTF competitions to maintain our problem-solving skills and improve our abilities."

Q. If you win first place in the finals and receive a prize, what do you want to do with it?

"We haven't decided how to use the prize money yet. However, we jokingly discussed investing it in stocks or real estate among ourselves."