Texas A&M Capture the Flag Competition (TAMUctf) – 2021

Dates: April 22-25, 2021

Time: Starting at 6:00pm, but participants can show up early

Location: Cybersecurity Club Discord (https://cybr.club)

Registration: Will open at 6:00pm on April 20, 2021 at tamuctf.com

TAMUctf is a jeopardy-style cybersecurity capture the flag competition built and run by fellow Texas A&M Students. The competition has been designed to have challenges accessible to newer players as well ones that will keep more experienced players busy. So if you are just getting into cybersecurity or have been playing CTFs for a while, TAMUctf will be a great opportunity to learn new cybersecurity skills!

The Texas A&M Cybersecurity Club will be hosting a virtual kickoff event for TAMUctf at the beginning of the event, Thursday April 22nd 6pm CT. The kickoff event will be happening in our discord, which you can join here: discord.gg/nCpZzbB

The Cybersecurity Club will be giving the following prizes during the kickoff event:

• – Linux Basics for Hackers for the first place winner at the end of the kickoff event
• – month TryHackMe licenses for the top 5 at the end of the kickoff event
• – tickers and shirts, given via raffle

The following prizes will be award by TAMUctf at the end of the event:

• – TAMUctf mugs for First Bloods for the following challenges:
  • – dubious
  • – seventh core of hell
  • – volatile personality
  • – shellcode golf 2: shellcode harder
• – $300 scholarship for first place
• – $200 scholarship for second place
• – $100 scholarship for third place
• – A choice of Security+ or Network+ certificate for top 5 places

Prizes for TAMU students only.

The competition is open to public teams; however, each Texas A&M student will be required to compete individually. The entire competition will be all online as well, so you will be able to compete from anywhere on campus or even at home.

What is a CTF?

Capture the Flag (CTF) is a special kind of information security competition. There are three common types of CTFs: Jeopardy, Attack-Defense and Mixed.

Jeopardy-style CTFs (TAMUctf) has a series of questions (tasks) in a range of categories. For example, Web, Forensic, Crypto, Binary Exploitation, or something else. Teams or individuals can earn points for every solved task. There are more points for more complicated tasks usually. The team or individual with the most points when the game is over is the CTF winner. Famous example of such CTF is Defcon CTF quals.

Attack-defense is another type of competition in which every team has their own network (or only one host) with vulnerable services. Each team is given time for patching services and developing exploits. Then, organizers connect participants of the competition and the wargame starts! Participants should protect their own services for defense points and hack opponents for attack points. Historically, this is the first type of CTF. Everyone is familiar with DEF CON CTF, which is something like a World Cup of all other competitions.

Mixed competitions may vary possible formats. It may be something like wargame with special time for task-based elements (e.g., UCSB iCTF).

CTF games often touch on many other aspects of information security: cryptography, stego, binary analysis, reverse engineering, mobile security, and others. Good teams generally have strong skills and experience in all these issues.

If you have any questions feel free to contact the development team at ctf@tamu.edu.