ESC is an educational, research-oriented tournament aimed at hacking into the hardware of embedded systems. First run in 2008, it is the oldest hardware security competition in the world, and 2025 represents ESC's 18-year anniversary.

Past ESC competitions have focused on data exfiltration attacks against IoT devices, hacking the firmware of a RISC-V Wi-Fi access point and executing acoustic side channel on 3D printing devices.

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The 2025 ESC competition centers on side channel attacks (SCAs) and fault injection attacks (FIAs), techniques used to extract sensitive data from infrastructure-critical cyber physical systems. Participants will engage in a series of challenges that involve designing and executing these attacks, as well as investigating methods to defend against them. The ChipWhisperer Nano will serve as the target hardware platform, providing teams with a safe and controlled setting to showcase their expertise in launching and mitigating these advanced attack strategies.

The event comprises a qualification and a final/competition phase where teams will be able to explore several variations of fault injections and side channels, as well as suggest mitigations for the discovered exploits.