TAMUctf

TAMUctf is a jeopardy style cybersecurity capture the flag competition built and ran 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!

There are prizes available for Texas A&M students for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in each classification (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, and Graduate) and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd overall! Some of the prizes this year include No Starch Press Books, Raspberry Pi B+ kits, Yubikeys, and much more!

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.

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 gain 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 interesting kind of competition. Here every team has their own network(or only one host) with vulnerable services. Your team has time for patching your services and developing exploits usually. Then, organizers connect participants of the competition and the wargame starts! You should protect own services for defense points and hack opponents for attack points. Historically this is a first type of CTFs, everybody knows about DEF CON CTF – 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.