First of all, thank all organizers for this wonderful event! The challenges are fun and interesting and the people there are really nice and helpful.
I didn't intend to play at first because I read that "the event starts at 09:30" - I'd be like 10h behind! While having a family day I realized it was UTC 🤦. Timezone is the bane of my existence =/
While it's still beginner-friendly, this seems harder than Cyber Apocalypse, another CTF I played earlier this year. For crypto, no typical RSAs, the "custom cipher" and "block cipher" challenges are less typical. For Web, no more silly sql injection and IDORs. For reverse and pwn, I'm weak as always. The blockchain and OSINT category are new to me. While I completed most of the OSINT challenges, I'm generally unfamiliar with blockchains plus I hate their carbon footprints. The bright side is I had a lot to learn 😄
There are time sinkholes in this challenge that prove to be fatal for solo players. I could have been more decisive in giving up the question cough cough Google Map entirely.
- I'm still reluctant in using bruteforcing tools, thinking it'll be slow and have other concerns; IT WAS FAST (<1s)
- I only had 5 minutes left when I learnt of the solution to the non-se
- Oracle for Block Cipher Enthusiasts - the situation is not very practical so it really needs some drawing-the-diagram-out.
- JS Lock (Reversing) - finally it isn't beautifiers and web assembly. I used
JSON.stringifyto search at first, which turned out to be too slow.
- Last digit - who doesn't love the recent Python update.
- Treasure Hunt - there are a lot of implicit assumptions for a challenge without source code.
- Pre-Kebab whatever - we all know why