What: Capture The Flag (CTF) competition
Where: Fidel Center Ballroom, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM
When: November 5 & 6 2011, 10:00am - 6:00pm
Capture The Flag puts teams head-to-head in a skills test covering cybersecurity, systems administration, programming, codebreaking, digital forensics, mathematics, and more.
The contests and puzzles in the event are designed to be fun and challenging for newbies and cyber security professionals alike, so don’t worry if you’re a newb. Register a team and come have some fun.
The City of Socorro web site has information about lodging, local restaurants, and more. Socorro is not a large town: nearly all hotels are about the same distance from the New Mexico Tech campus.
Registration is open to all students at colleges and universities throughout New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and West Texas.
Teams may have between 1 and 10 members. Although larger teams inevitably benefit from sheer volume, small teams can still make significant progress. Please register your team as soon as possible, so we can reserve adequate space for the event.
You can join other CTF participants on IRC: woozle.org channel #ctf. You can connect with SSL on ports 994 or 6697.
Each team will get their own table with chairs, an ethernet cable connected to the contest network, and a power strip. Teams may borrow an 8-port mini-switch if they need one, although you are encouraged to bring your own networking gear.
Each team is expected to provide any laptops, desktops (remember that there is limited space), network cables, storage devices, and additional networking equipment they need in order to work. No meals are provided, but there are several restaurants close to the university.
Although you can use any operating system you wish, the most successful teams in the past have mostly run Unix variants. This is probably due to most Unix installs coming standard useful tools such as telnet, hex dump, file, and scripting languages.
To get an idea about what’s helpful to bring, the dirtbags team brings the following items to Defcon oCTF:
We have set up an environment in which you will engage in behaviors which are illegal outside of the contest: breaking in to machines, stealing information, etc. Nevertheless, there are a few rules in place to assure everyone gets to enjoy the event. If you break the rules, we will kick you out for the rest of the event, and may refuse to let you in again in future events.
Consider the network hostile: we are not responsible for what happens to any device plugged in to the event network. You may want to reinstall your laptop after the contest ends. Bring a machine with personal information at your peril.
If you have any questions that this page doesn’t address), hop on IRC or mail me and I’ll see what I can do to help you out.