Capture the flag 2013

http://ctf365.com/

by hamstah • 13 years ago

100 53 13 years ago

ctf365.com

duked• 13 years ago

Tried to sign up and got the same message no matter what email/password I use: " Invalid email or password. "

IronWhale3• 13 years ago

It worked for me on mobile safari. It's actually a nice sign up process - I was immediately directed to a dashboard.

IronWhale3• 13 years ago

Oh, btw, for sign up there is no password field. You must be using the sign in form (it could still be a bug, e.g. Clicking sign in shows the sign up form for your browser).

abraininavat• 13 years ago

Dad?

kerosen7• 13 years ago

An email to support@ctf365.com would help us a lot to make you happy. Thanks!

IronWhale3• 13 years ago

This is cool. Please hammer home the C&C nostalgia - we all love it.

thejosh• 13 years ago

Really hard to read the text, but really nice homepage.

recursive• 13 years ago

How is that possible? What's the purpose of the homepage?

rquantz• 13 years ago

The apparent trouble with signup notwithstanding, this seems like great fun. The thing is, I didn't find out about those problems, because I didn't even try to sign up. I have no idea how I would go about getting started being able to do this.

Can anybody suggest resources for lowly web developers to make our way into security? Even if just for fun?

bfish510• 13 years ago

I've been reading though Hacking: The Art of Exploitation. So far I'm enjoying it.

BWStearns6• 13 years ago

Definitely agree. Also highly recommend setting up a Kali or Backtrack box. It's a lot less time consuming than starting your toolkit from scratch.

fduran• 13 years ago

Ellipsis753• 13 years ago

Thank you. I had not heard of that before and it looks very helpful.

gverri• 13 years ago

Also: http://www.amazon.com/The-Web-Application-Hackers-Handbook/d...

kerosen7• 13 years ago

You should start with http://www.securitytube.net/ also on youtube you'll find very insightful information.

stephengillie3• 13 years ago

Mobile browser fail

Edit: The signup/signin box is half off to the left of the screen.

gailees• 13 years ago

Love it. But very janky website makes me worried about the quality.

chameco• 13 years ago

Yeah, the site seems to leak memory like a sieve. I had to kill -9 firefox.

angrydev• 13 years ago

Also hanging my browser.

grey-area• 13 years ago

It's a good illustration of a misuse of the webapp single-page formula for a simple informational site. This could have been simple HTML with a proper url for each page, so that you could actually link to the subpages, but instead they're trying to load the content in with js, and performing terribly with no feedback on clicks when I last looked.

The actual content is here (and loads pretty quick as it should):

http://ctf365.com/pages/game http://ctf365.com/pages/rules http://ctf365.com/pages/prize

Looks like a rails site, not sure what all the gmaps code is all about, perhaps backend pages?

A fun idea, but I'd prefer if they just specified a simple set of services that you have to support, say something like:

IMAP

Serve this json

Serve this html and let people edit it

Serve this information from any db and let people edit it

and leave the backends to people's imagination. It sounds like they're going to actually specify different CMSs etc, and installing browsers?!?, when they should be specifying what protocols and data are required - that would let you use whatever service and backend tools you wanted.

The maps on the blog look pretty though.

mjolk2• 13 years ago

This will be interesting to see when finished, but it would be better if each 'Fortress" had to offer services, instead of dictating that each camp has to run POP + Wordpress + some bullshit plugins. Also, this type of activity definitely will break terms of service for internet service and hosting providers, as well as potentially several laws.

dkokelley5• 13 years ago

"...this type of activity definitely will break terms of service for internet service and hosting providers, as well as potentially several laws."

How so? Is the activity itself inherently against TOS or laws? It seems to me that by running the competition, ctf365 intends to have users purposefully exploit sandboxed systems.

talmand3• 13 years ago

I would imagine one example could be a website hosted by a third party. Possibly you would have to inform the host of the situation and get their approval. Otherwise you might be breaking a generic law about gaining unauthorized access to a computer.

mjolk2• 13 years ago

How do you define a 'sandboxed' system? What if I choose to run the Wordpress/Django/Drupal/Whatever-CMS on a shared host? Cracking tools don't often take into account the negative effects on non-target hosts, nor are they generally tolerated by shell providers.

For example, see 'Prohibited Usage' for Linode: https://www.linode.com/tos.cfm

Unless you're paying for raw bandwidth, you're subject to the ToS of each resource provider along the way.

kerosen7• 13 years ago

We want to make as few rules as possible. Our scope is to mimic the real world. Still working on the game design and mechanics.

kyle_martin12• 13 years ago

Interestingly, they're using the same technique for the cloud effect as that Japanese energy drink site that was posted here not too long ago.

talmand3• 13 years ago

I hope their use of imagery from the Captain America movie is covered under fair use or derivative work.

http://comicbookmarks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/detail-...

kyle_martin12• 13 years ago

Agreed!

kerosen7• 13 years ago

The internet is full of information and we've find this 3D Cloud Effect tutorial http://www.clicktorelease.com/blog/how-to-make-clouds-with-c... You should try it too.

Buzaga2• 13 years ago

wish I knew anything about hacking to play this, just know development :( setting up the server would be some work to me already

stephengillie3• 13 years ago

Hopefully they'll at least link to good configuration sites for each service, to give new players at least a fighting chance.

I wonder how long it would take someone to spin up a script to install all of these services...

SMTP, POP, IMAP, FTP, etc., one CMS + specific plugins, 2 different internet browsers, 3 web applications & at least 2 different databases

So...a mail server, file servers, multi-webhost, databases, and CMS with many plugins. I assume that "different databases" means different database stacks on different clusters, not "both MySQL and SQL Server 2012" on the same server, right? (In Windowsville this would all be within an AD domain, I'm not sure what the Linux equivalent is.) Will there be a required volume of photo/social datamass to be stored on the server? Maybe instead of some kind of "flag file", we'll have to store embarrassing photos of ourselves?

Who installs a second browser on a server?

Hello71• 13 years ago

curl and wget, right?

herge• 13 years ago

Who installs a first browser on a server?

redblacktree• 13 years ago

Of course, this introduces a meta-game where script writers can include their own malicious code. :)

dkokelley5• 13 years ago

It might be a great learning opportunity then. Check out some tutorials and see what sort of security considerations go into setting up and running a server.

Buzaga2• 13 years ago

sure I'd love to, but I wonder how do you guys keep up, I feel pretty swamped in news, own projects(maintaining 1, like 4 or 5 to start) and work :/

grimtrigger• 13 years ago

Is there anything to stop me from signing up random people's websites?

BWStearns6• 13 years ago

Per another branch of the conversation, they set up the servers, you just control them, so the entire conflict happens in a relatively sandboxed environment.

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

I don't think there is anywhere on the website that explicitly tells you what the objective of this is, nor exactly what a flag is (even if it is more of a concept). As much as I can infer from it, in game instructions, they should be explicit.

neumino• 13 years ago

Looks like they got too much traffic...

BWStearns6• 13 years ago

Anyone interested in making a HN team? (possibly a few given that it's limited members/team)

andrewbuss• 13 years ago

I'd be interested in joining one if there is space for someone with limited administration experience.

BWStearns6• 13 years ago

Shoot me an email, brianw.stearns@gmail.com. I have [very] limited practical admin experience, but I will try to scare up a friend who can devote some time to it.

kerosen7• 13 years ago

CTF365 It's a Startup on bootstrap mode (self funded) that will change the way Information Security is learned. We try to do our best with very few resources. No seed money, no Kickstarter money but full of passion and dedication.

Capture the flag 2013

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