CTF Day 1: Getting Started

If you have read the first post, you probably know that I recently started studying for Capture the Flag (CTF) events. As I dive deeper into this new challenge, I decided to record my journey because why not? Through this blog, I hope to bring positive influence to all who are starting CTF challenges. Moreover, because I am not a professional in this field, any feedback are welcomed. Then, let’s get started!!

What is CTF?

First and foremost, what is CTF? Capture the Flag in terms of cybersecurity is an activity that assists in acquiring knowledge in cybersecurity for the participants. The objective is to find flags hidden somewhere in the provided prompt either individually or by teams, while participating as a team is more common. The three main types of CTF are Jeopardy-style CTF, Attack-Defence CTF and Mixed.

Participants in Jeopardy-style must uncover flags hidden in possible areas. In Attack-Defence CTF, two teams compete with each other by first creating protection of their own flags in a given amount of time. Next, two teams make an effort to catch the flag of the other team while protecting their own flags. In the mixed round, as indicated by the name, both the Jeopardy-style and Attack-Defense are utilized.

General Structure of My Journey

Instead of learning all the prerequisite tools such as Linux commands and different programming languages, I would like to learn from beginner challenges. Unlike Olympiad mathematics where you learn the tools, its proofs, and applications, I found that countless people start with challenges from Hack The Box, picoCTF, TryHackMe, and Bandit from OverTheWire. Most importantly, searching and debugging on my own would be the most important factor. Moreover, because I will be documenting my journey, I will also share all of my write-ups that can be publicly shared.

Other Projects

How can we solve a problem if we don’t know the language to read and write? Because learning different languages especially for automation is key, I decided to learn Python, JavaScript, and C++ (for IOI). Because I learn by actively doing, I decided to build mini projects that could motivate me to learn further and potentially receive feedback. Please check out my future posts on each project, and I will be excited to learn from the feedback!!