Introduction

NUS Greyhats recently took part in the European Cybersecurity Challenge @ Norway as a guest team by invitation, since some of us took part in the Asian Cybersecurity Challenge and International Cybersecurity Challenge. I was excited to go as this was one of our first participation as Greyhats in an international CTF. We learnt lots and have fun! I will only include the competition days here as the rest is too long.

Travel Day

Picture is not as good as I thought it would be, but we had a long flight to Norway (~13 hours). The team was tired and cold after our flight, and took a nice rest.

Day 1

This day was meant to be the day when the competition was a Jeopardy-based CTF. It was quite interesting since there were so many challenges, so it was a problem of teamwork and speed.

Day 2

Today was a little different. The CTF was supposed to be in Attack-Defence format, but there were quite a few hiccups on the organizer’s side. It was my first time setting up the infrastructure necessary for this format and I made a few mistakes, sadly.

Day 3

The last day of the competition was Jeopardy-style CTF again. The duration was shorter so the challenges were slightly easier. There were some interesting pwn challenges that I only solved 5 minutes after the CTF ended.

Conclusion

I had lots of fun in the competition, and Norway was a beautiful country to explore and visit. Definitely looking forward to participating next year!