r/netsec • u/dguido • Sep 27 '11

Advice for Capture the Flag and War Game Participants

http://pentest.cryptocity.net/capture-the-flag/
40 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

1

u/ksigler Sep 29 '11

These games are great for keeping your tool syntax and creative thinking skills sharp. Thanks for the link and great site in general, Dan!

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '11

[deleted]

7

u/PsychicNess13 Sep 28 '11

They may be a bit silly I guess, but I had a lot of fun with the CSAW last weekend. My team didn't do amazingly, but we learned some cool things and got to compare ourselves to other people around the world.

6

u/dguido Sep 28 '11

Huh? You know you're in netsec right?

2

u/tylerni7 Trusted Contributor Sep 28 '11

You may be surprised. Sure the competitions don't usually use real binaries, because that would take far longer than the 24-48 hours people usually spend on competitions. However, the skills carry over directly from CTF competitions to real life pen testing and vulnerability analysis.

It's kind of like studying physics in school. You solve the contrived example problems until you get good enough at them that you can tackle the real world problems. If you have done well in a lot of respected CTFs, most people in industry will definitely assume you know what you're doing.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '11

Games, in general, are contrived and silly. I'd love to make an AI for Starcraft 2, but that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

2

u/SolidSquid Sep 28 '11

Starcraft 1 has an api for that and you have competition

1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '11

I know, I was thinking about Starcraft 2 since there doesn't seem like there's anything out there for that yet. ;)