CTF FAQ

How often to CTFs happen? And how long are they?

There is a CTF nearly every week. There are many teams (as well as some professional organizations) who host them.

The majority of CTFs are 48 hours to allow for people around the globe to play. Some are as short as 8 hours and some (called wargames) run all year long.

You don't have to participate for the full 48 hours, but most challenges take at least an hour or two to solve, and some take many many hours. The more time you put in, the more you learn and get ready.

Where are these CTFs located?

Most CTFs are hosted on the internet. We meet up in person on campus to interact and communicate with each other so we can solve challenges faster. Some people chose to play remotely from their homes. If you do so, please communicate as you solve the challenges on the channel we'll create so that others know you are working on the challenges and we can collaborate better.

Who hosts these competitions?

It varies. Many are hosted by fellow teams (including many university teams like b01lers) and also more professional teams. Some are held as an event during a conference such as DEFCON or Chaos Communications Camp.

Also, some companies host CTFs for fun and for recruiting ;)

I don't know anything yet, how can I get started?

That's perfectly fine! If all you do is look at a challenge to try to learn something out of it, that's fantastic! It means you can get prepped for upcoming CTFs faster and maybe learn a thing or two.

Some harder CTFs need large amounts of people so it goes all hands on deck. Just by practicing and learning from things, you can help out in the future. Think of it as investing for the next competition.

Seriously, I don't know anything. How can I help?

One thing that happens often is that while one of the more advanced challenges is being inspected with people analyzing the challenge to find the bugs, you can contribute by helping write wrapper programs to interact with the challenge! Just learn pwntools and help build a wrapper so that when we do find the bug, we can more quickly start developing our exploit. The only skill you need in that is programming. As a bonus, by interacting with a more experienced player, you can pick up a thing or two.

What happens during the meetings?

The Friday "meetings" are scheduled times to play in that weekend's CTF and have fun. Most CTFs start on Friday evening, so this schedule works out. If the CTF doesn't start on or before Friday night, we might postpone the meeting until Saturday.

Weeks without CTFs are times for us to sit together, practice, and exchange skills amongst each other. Come in with questions to ask, or new skills to show off.

Our modus operandi is playing these CTFs. So playing and competing is what matters the most, no matter your skill level.