This is honestly quite cool, although it's hard to depict what actually happens in the CTF side
The hacking part is commonly referred to as CTF, multiple teams are faced with up to real-world hacking challenges; all of them consisting of finding a secret string (sequence of characters). Challenges like steganography (finding hidden information inside a picture, a video, a sound file), decrypting without any other information (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos), exploiting common flaws in system configuration, in tools, in programs and in website development.
IIRC one scene in the last season of Mr Robot depicts this kind of tournament
(I'd make sure your browser/OS is not Spectre-vulnerable before visiting these)
http://hackfortress.net/
https://www.defcon.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ev9ZX9J45A
https://www.root-me.org/?lang=en
http://captf.com/practice-ctf/