Abstract

This talk will be a mini-tutorial on capture the flag (CTF) competitions and how to solve the challenges posed in CTFs. CTFs are as close to the stereotype of a movie ‘hacker’ as it gets. CTF challenges present a chance to sharpen your skills in both exploiting vulnerabilities and hardening systems within a controlled environment. Challenges often include reverse engineering, exploiting vulnerabilities in binaries and web applications, stenography (hidden messages), exploiting cryptography weaknesses, forensics and (traditionally) lock picking. This practical tutorial will introduce you to the format of CTFs and common categories of problems, and get you started with the skills to solve basic challenges.