SecLounge SIG: Annual Capture the Flag Challenge

Overview

The first annual Capture the Flag ("CTF") event launched at the 24th Annual FIRST Conference in Malta 2012. The activities were organized by a collobarative effort between FIRST members and the now retired Dragon Research Group. In 2018, the FIRST SecLounge SIG was chartered to design, develop, and conduct security challenges and competetition exercises for the FIRST community.

Due to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the SecLounge SIG hosted the CTF competitions completely online. The online editions of the CTF were open to the community at large, with more than 800 participants from around the world.

For the 2024 edition, the SecLounge SIG will offer again a hybrid event allowing both remote and on-site participation. The SIG is excited to welcome a set of new challenge contributors to the group this year and hope to keep this year's CTF players engaged throughout the conference week.

The hybrid CTF will run from Monday to Thursday (June 10-14). The communicated scheduled will be in the Japan Standard Time (UTC +9). You must be a registered conference attendee (in-person or virtual) in order to participate.

How to Play

The CTF consists of a series of technical exercises (challenges) where the participants must find an answer or flag and submit it to the CTF platform.

Every flag submitted contributes to the team's score. A number of new challenges are released every day during the conference and are categorized as network, web, ICS, cryptography, reverse engineering, programming, miscellaneous, puzzle, and so on.

Do You Need a Team?

It is strongly recommended to participate as a team with a maximum of 4 members. Please start planning ahead with your peers also participating. Each team can strategize and assign challenges to members based on their expertise such that the team's combined knowledge is exploited to its fullest potential.

The only condition is to have at least one player on-site.

Will There Be Prizes?

Yes! We will be awarding three teams this year with the following indicative prices (subject to change):

1^st prize – iPads
2^nd prize - Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kits
3^rd prize - Anker Soundcore life P3s

Timeline of Events

Monday, June 10 at 08:30 am - Opening Remarks
June 10-13 CTF - Challenge will start at 10:30 on Monday, June 10 and close at 15:30 on Thursday, June 13 local time
Debrief scheduled for 15:50-16:50 in Olive
Friday, June 14 at 12:30 – Closing Session remarks and awards

How to Register

Registered attendees of the conference will receive an email prior to the start of conference with registration instructions. A link will also be available within the conference app.