LONDON, UK – December 2nd, 2025 – Oblivious has partnered with TikTok to launch the first edition of PET ARENA, a hands-on Capture The Flag (CTF) competition designed for students, researchers, engineers, and cybersecurity enthusiasts to foster innovations in privacy protection mechanisms. This inaugural program centers on red-teaming differential privacy within an interactive database system.

The competition takes place in a simulated database environment where participants gain aggregate query access to several datasets. Assuming the role of ethical red-teaming adversary for research purposes, participants will design and execute novel or known information extraction strategies through five missions, organized into three tracks of varying difficulty.

The missions invite participants to:

• Detect database membership
• Infer sensitive attributes
• Link records across tables
• Develop other innovative interventions in an Open Mission

Jack Fitzsimons, PhD in Differential Privacy by Oxford University and CTO of Oblivious, says that the team is excited about the launch of PET ARENA and the opportunity it creates for the privacy research community in Europe. “It provides a structured, rigorous environment where red-teaming methods can be tested against realistic constraints and diverse protection mechanisms. By challenging participants to engage directly with adversarial scenarios, we aim to accelerate the development of practical and trustworthy privacy technologies. Competitions like this play an important role in strengthening the field, and we’re proud to be part of an initiative designed to drive meaningful innovation.”

"We've observed a disconnect between theoretical privacy concepts and their real-world application," said Sagar Sharma, Research Scientist for TikTok's Privacy Innovation Lab and program co-lead. "For this reason, we created PET ARENA – a simulated database environment for our research and engineering community to rigorously test privacy protection mechanisms with different red-teaming strategies. We're optimistic that this first season of the competition – and future editions focusing on additional privacy-protecting mechanisms and player versus player (PVP) mode – will pave the way for more secure and trustworthy solutions."

A panel of distinguished cybersecurity and privacy experts will judge submissions based on their innovative approach and technical soundness. The most successful individuals will be awarded the following prizes:

• 1st Place: €4,000
• 2nd Place: €2,000
• 3rd Place: €1,000
• Honorable Mentions
• Certificates for participants who complete at least one mission.

Who can apply

The competition is open to any individual student, researcher, or industry professional with expertise in privacy, security, ML, data engineering, or related fields.

Participants must be currently residing in either the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK) or Switzerland in order to be eligible to participate.

How to apply

Applications should be submitted via registration on the Antigranular website and will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Applications should include names, valid email addresses, and – if applicable – portfolios of participants to be considered for eligibility.

Contest details

The contest will run for a total of 5 weeks, officially kicking off on December 15th, 2025, 10:00:00 CET. All missions must be completed by January 16th, 2026, 23:59:59 CET. Winners and participants who have submitted notable contributions will be notified on or before February 13th, 2026 and invited to a hybrid award ceremony (location and date to be confirmed).

For more information or to apply, please visit the competition webpage.

If there are any questions, please email hello@antigranular.com