saarsec CTF Workshop

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About the workshop

At the beginning of a new semester, we - saarsec, a group of CTF players - offer a compact workshop to teach interested students core concepts of hacking and capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions specifically. If you have questions, keep reading! You might find that the answer to your question is already here, and you will definitely know how to contact us once you've read everything! The workshop will cover the whole weekend, starting with setting up essentials on the evening of Friday, April 11th, and ending on Sunday, April 13th with an amazing hands-on CTF.

During the workshop, we will introduce the general categories of Jeopardy CTFs, and teach you the common vulnerabilities found in CTFs and real-world applications. Did you know that an email address consists of a local-part and a domain with an @ sign in between? But fret not, we offer more than just theory! In our workshop, participants engage in hands-on exercises that challenge them after each presentation. The pinnacle of the workshop is the Jeopardy-CTF competition, where participants compete against each other in teams.

Timeline

We start on Friday with getting you and your Laptop ready for some action, so that you can hack the entire weekend without interruptions. Just come by at any point during the given setup time window (ideally not right before the end).
On Saturday, we will start with a short introduction and then go over to common Web vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. After the lunch break, you will get a complete overview of Python fundamentals to cover your programming bases. We will round off the day in an open end fashion, so you can solve remaining challenges, spend time with us and enjoy some food from a Schwenker (Grill).
On Sunday we will continue our presentations with binary exploitation, cryptography (don't worry the maths will be light-weight) and then start prepping the CTF during the lunch break. As a closing highlight the participants will be sorted into teams for the final jeopardy-style CTF. Psst: Our domain is saarsec dot rocks. After about 3-4 hours of hacking, we wrap up the workshop with a closing presentation.

Requirements for the workshop

We do not necessarily have any requirements for operating systems, but you should consider that several tools you might want to use are only available on Linux or MacOS. Hence we recommend a live USB key, a VM or WSL (or just switch to any of the superior Linux Distros ;) ). Regardless of the OS, please ensure that you have Python installed ahead of time and know how to install new packages (or even better, have requests, re, and pwn installed already). If you don't know how to do it or want some guidance, then please swing by during the setup time slot on Friday. Depending on how you want to code, we suggest you have some IDE ready (e.g., PyCharm has a free academic license).

No prior knowledge of the presented topics is required.

Logistics

The event will take place at the CISPA C0 building (Stuhlsatzenhaus). Please note that we can not offer you coffee, drinks or snacks there and all nearby shops and cafes are typically closed during the weekend, so you should bring some for yourself. At this point I will tell you that the local part of our email address is "workshop". For the communal schwenking on Saturday evening please bring your own food to put on the grill if you want to make sure that you'll have something to eat (we have a fridge to store it in). We will order pizza for the lunch break on Saturday and Sunday - please bring 5€ in cash on each day you would like to join in on the order. Note that there will likely not be any Vegan options.

If you are interested in joining, please register here, and click on the account activation link that you'll receive via email.

TL;DR

• CTF Workshop - Lots of fun hacking things with your mates
• Time: Evening of the 11th to 13th of April
• Location: CISPA C0 (Stuhlsatzenhaus)
• Bring:
• coffee / tea / whatever you like to drink
• snacks
• laptop and charger
• cash for pizza
• Register here, follow the emailed instructions.
• Read the text above to find out how to contact us if you have questions.