Getting Started
Learn how to participate in CTF challenges and improve your cybersecurity skills
What is a CTF?
Capture The Flag (CTF) is a type of cybersecurity competition where participants solve various challenges to find hidden "flags".
For our competition, these are in the form of short strings of text that (unless otherwise specified) follow the format VuwCTF{}.
The content between the braces varies from challenge to challenge, and getting the correct flag is proof that you've completed it.
Tools You'll Need
There are many tools available for CTFs, but here are a few basic recommendations.- A code editor. This is useful for writing custom scripts and more powerful text editing. We recommend Visual Studio Code for beginners.
- Ghidra. For reverse engineering challenges where you need to decompile an application, Ghidra is a great free and open-source tool.
- Web Developer Tools. These can be accessed in every web browser with F12.
- Pwntools. This advanced binary exploitation Python library makes writing exploits much easier.
- Netcat. To interface with a server on a given port, this command line tool may be useful.