CTF events are usually timed, and the points are totaled once the time has expired. The winning player / team will be the one that solved the most challenges and thus secured the highest score.
Types of Challenges
CTFs usually showcase different challenges that utilize or exercise specific areas of focus. Some popular areas of focus are:
- Programming
- These types of tasks usually require some sort of programming to solve. In most cases, it will involve a mixture of programming and some reverse engineering.
- “Crypto”
- These challenges feature common “real world” scenarios that often include the ever-popular ransomware type of malware.
- Exploitation
- These tasks will force you to determine how to exploit (using buffer overflow, string format, SQL injection, etc.…) a given running process on the CTF target machine.
- Reverse Engineering
- For tasks like this, reverse engineering will usually be required, for example, when the server sends you an executable.