Leading a Team for MagicCTF

Today, I am writing up a quick blog post on my thoughts and experience leading a team and competing in Mid-Atlantic Gigabit Innovation Collaboratory (MAGIC) CTF.

We participated locally on registered sites while the competition end was held online in the cloud accessed by SSH. All the challenges were unlocked at once and sitting on the server within level folders progressing in difficulty. Which was odd as it was the first time i had seen this format before. Other capture the flag events, I have participated in unlocked new challenges gradually after completing them.

As a capture the flag(CTF) enthusiast and the team captain i surprised and pleased to be able to guide and introduce the idea behind the competition, what to expect, the various tools likely needed for challenges.

Throughout, It was fun introducing the team to common concepts within capture the flag. With the only downside being, I didn’t get to tackle as many of the challenges as I would have liked to, which was a trade-off of leading the team, answering questions and pointing them in the right direction. For my team’s first time taking part in a CTF event, we came 33 out of 110 teams across America and Europe that where competition which to me is a great success.

Which was a different but enjoyable experience and gave me a boost in confidence knowing that I could depart knowledge I had built up competing and help the team complete various challenges. Going forward, I look forward to more opportunities like this moving on to university.