[SCAN 2026 Final Interview] ④1nf1n1ty: Solid Experience Built Through Over 200 CTFs

Team Infinity. Source = Team Infinity
The finals of the world's first 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 the field of digital assets. It is hosted by the digital asset information company D.Aset, with the global blockchain data platform Chainalysis participating as a CTF (Capture The Flag) partner.

The finals of SCAN 2026 will feature the top 20 teams from the preliminary round (a total of 416 teams, 754 participants).

<D.Aset> conducted written interviews with teams composed of investigative agencies, security experts, and university students from around the world that advanced to the finals.

*The teams that advanced 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 / Ubsida Academiae / Chaos of KAOS

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

"We are part of Team Infinity, a cybersecurity club at SASTRA Deemed University, currently ranked 4th in India and 35th globally. We are both graduating students and have participated in competitions together for quite some time, having entered over 200 CTFs. Our shared interest in virtual assets (digital assets), blockchain, and decentralized finance (DeFi) led us to participate in this CTF together.

I am Hemanth G, and I go by the nickname 4rch4ng3l. I primarily handle OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and reverse engineering. In the Web3 space, I have developed various scripts for automating on-chain transaction tracking, reconstructing transaction flows across DeFi protocols, integrating RPC endpoints, and analyzing automated market maker (AMM) swaps and liquidity movements. I have also participated in a group researching APT (Advanced Persistent Threat). Besides CTFs and research activities, I have contributed to several open-source projects, which has allowed me to understand security from a broader perspective.

Another team member is Lohinth M, who goes by the nickname gr00t. He primarily focuses on web exploits and cryptography and has experience participating in a group researching APT as well. His interest in Web3 was sparked by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on Ethereum, starting with his first minting experience through the Moonbirds derivative collection in 2022. He is also actively contributing to open-source projects, gaining practical experience in handling actual codebases."

Q. You advanced to the finals after passing the SCAN 2026 preliminary round, which had 416 teams participating worldwide. How do you feel about reaching the finals, and what was the most memorable moment during the preliminary round?

"Honestly, I am really happy and proud to have advanced to the finals. We are a team of just two, and we know it won't be easy competing against opponents with rich experience in investigation and blockchain forensics. However, that also makes it feel even more exciting. The preliminary round started at 5:30 AM Indian time, so we had to track coffee before we could track funds.

The most memorable moment was when I saw our name on the list of finalists. At that moment, it finally hit me, and I felt rewarded for all the effort, late nights, and lack of sleep I had put in. I also gained confidence that the skills I had honed through CTFs could be well applied to blockchain forensics."

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

"The problem that took the most time was the token-locking challenge. Initially, we approached it by trying to find users who withdrew more than the deposited amount, but this challenge also included users who still held inflated stakes unfairly.

After tracking the upgrade history of the token, we discovered that in one version, even though the balance was moved to a new storage, the balanceOf() function continued to read the previous data. This caused the locking contract to calculate the balance as less than it actually was, resulting in an excessive issuance of stakes.

We then recreated all lock and unlock events to compare the actual issued stakes with the amounts each user should have received. The key breakthrough was realizing that this issue was not just a simple withdrawal tracking problem but an accounting bug that required reconstructing the contract's past state."

Q. What tools, technologies, and analysis methods did you use for on-chain data analysis and fund flow tracking during the preliminary round? If you developed any programs or had unique analysis methods, please share them.

"We utilized Python, blockchain RPC, archive nodes, and explorers such as Etherscan, Blockscout, Tronscan, and Solana Explorer.

Through previous Web3 CTFs, we already had over 40 reusable scripts that could be used for ABI decoding, historical data retrieval, event recreation, wallet clustering, and cross-chain tracking.

We organized these scripts into our own agentic workflow, allowing us to select and reuse appropriate scripts based on the task. Most repetitive data collection was handled through automation, and important conclusions were directly verified through original transactions, contract source code, and various independent data sources."

Q. Compared to other finalist teams, what do you think is your team's greatest strength or differentiated problem-solving approach?

"Our greatest strength is probably the synergy developed through participating in over 200 CTFs together. We can quickly divide problems, question each other's assumptions, and combine our strengths in OSINT and cryptography.

Our approach is also quite systematic. We automate repetitive data collection using existing scripts, but we verify all important conclusions directly. I believe this balance between speed and careful verification is one of the factors that creates our unique approach."

Q. What preparations are you making ahead of the finals on September 28?

"We are reviewing the preliminary problems from the beginning and addressing the areas where we spent the most time. We are also improving our analysis scripts and practicing under time-constrained investigation scenarios. Our goal is to have a reliable workflow and clear task division by the time we reach the finals, and to be sufficiently familiar with the tools so that we can spend our time thinking about the problems rather than debugging the environment."

Q. If you win first place in the finals and receive the prize money, what would you like to do?

"I would probably save a significant portion of the prize money for my future studies and career in cybersecurity. I also want to contribute to our club, Team Infinity, by improving the infrastructure for our annual cybersecurity competition, IRON CTF. The remaining portion would be used for workshops and resource support for the broader cybersecurity community, and of course, I would like to celebrate this achievement with my family and team members."

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