Capture the flag

CTF sign up

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CTF Hacker Registration

Date & Time

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30th April 2020	10:00 am - 2:00 pm (PDT GMT-7)
1st May 2020	10:00 am - 12:00 pm (PDT GMT-7)

Winner's bounty

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Achievment	Prize
Winner	bladeRF 2.0
1st runner up	YARD Stick One
2nd runner up	RTL-SDR kit

Overview

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Capture the Signal takes part at Hardwear.io Virtual Con!

Capture the Signal (CTS) is a new challenge-based CTF that focuses exclusively on the reverse engineering of radio signals. This activity is also known as "blind signal analysis" as the signals' specification are unknown to the attacker. This contest is organized by renowned community radio-hackers for researchers, hackers, and practitioners in the field!

Contestants should use their RF-hacking kung-fu and tools like GNURadio, GQRX, URH, Python, C, anything, to examine a series of increasingly complex radio signals to extract key information leading them to the final, exit signal.The game runs virtually, over Internet. The radio signals will be distributed "over IP". The use of IP eliminates the complexity of deploying actual radios and transmitting RF over the air. We use GNURadio for that.

GNURadio natively supports the tunneling of signals via ZeroMQ, so that the players can focus on the real challenge: reverse engineer the protocols without bothering the distribution of the signals. For the same reason, we provide ready-to-use scripts to remotely access the radio streams, as setting up the GNURadio toolchain is time consuming and is not relevant to the core of the challenge.

We also provide a VM image with all needed software to reverse engineer the signals. Of course, participants are welcome in using their own setup.

Each radio signal corresponds to a challenge. The challenges are sorted by difficulty, and each solved challenge gives you access to the next one. In other words, the flag contained in each signal represents the clue to the next radio signal.

Remember to submit the flag to our portal for validation because the more challenges you solve, the more points you gain. Points for challenges are statically assigned and are proportional to the difficulty of the challenge. The first participants to solve a challenge will receive higher number of points. At the end of the competition, the team with highest total points will be named the winner. In the case of two different teams having the same points, whichever team was quickest to reach this high score will be declared the champion.

Check-in

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To facilitate the start of the game, for example in configuring your machine e.g. downloading and installing the software we provide to simplify the connection to our infrastructure, we suggest you showing up on Wednesday 29th. Wednesday will be configuration & testing day, and you are welcome to ask questions to the organizers.