Capture the Flag

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Overview

Capture the Flag (CTF) is an exercise where White Hat hackers or Cyber Security enthusiasts try to acquire a flag from a intentionally compromised machine/system. Most of the time, this flag is just a hash value hidden within the compromised system in the form of a text file (flag.txt), hidden within an image (steganography), or even within execution code of a program.

Resources

The compromised machines need to be setup and prepared before you can begin practicing with them. There are a lot of resources online that provide both the machines as well as the environment for CTF. Below are some sources that I often use:

Guides

Listed in this section are the walkthroughs and guides that may be helpful to getting you started on doing some CTFs.

CTF Write-Ups

  • Mr. Robot
  • Necromancer