About CTF

“Capture The Flag” (CTF) competitions (in the cyber security sense) are not related to running outdoors or playing first-person shooters. Instead, they consist of a set of computer security puzzles (or challenges) involving reverse-engineering, memory corruption, cryptography, web technologies, and more. When players solve them they get a “flag,” a secret string which can be exchanged for points. The more points a team earns, the higher up it moves in rank.

There are several objectives of CTF games: solve problems, learn learn learn, and have fun. There are different styles of CTF games. Jeopardy and Attack & Defense are the two most common. In CSA we focus on the Jeopardy style.

Each challenge is designed so that when the competitor solves it, a small piece of text or “flag” is revealed. The flag is then submitted to a website or scoring engine in exchange for points. The amount of points rewarded is typically relative to the perceived difficulty of the challenge.