HITCON 2017 Capture the Flag (CTF) Competition

The Cadet Competitive Cyber Team (C3T) gathered in the basement of Thayer Hall to compete on the global stage in the HITCON 2017 Capture the Flag (CTF) competition. HITCON is a highly respected online CTF run from Taipei, Taiwan that has traditionally served as a qualifier for the DEFCON CTF and this year had over 1,000 teams competing. In an intense 72 hours, C3T solved five challenges, finishing 91st overall (top 10%), and 11th in United States. This CTF involved many high difficulty challenges that tested the team's ability to reverse engineer unfamiliar languages like embedded Lua, craft custom shellcode, and exploit a highly constrained command injection vulnerability. These challenges built upon the cadet's fundamental computer science knowledge while also exposing unique security flaws that required creative solutions. Building a solution that met these strict criteria required really digging into the assembly code and finding just the right instructions. In the end one of the team's newest members, CDT Alexander Heldstab '21 was the one to put it all together and get the flag. The team's performance is especially notable as an all undergraduate team competing against the very best in the world.