How To Learn Capture The Flag

Getting Started in Capture the Flag (CTF) Competitions

Capture the Flag (CTF) is one of the most interesting ways to learn cybersecurity. Learning through playing is an effective way to heave your skills and commencement in the cybersecurity field. We will discuss the bones the information virtually capture the flag (CTF) competitions, challenges, tools and resources for starting in capture the flag (CTF) competitions.This Commodity is designed to assist the newcomers to those type of competitions and provide the skills required to go started in cybersecurity or seek a new career in the infosec.

What is CTF?

CTF stands for Capture The Flag,This is a type of cybersecurity competitions or games with a purpose to locate a particular piece of text called a flag that may be on the server or behind a web folio.Capture The Flag (CTF) competition is simulating the real world scenarios of hacking a remote site or exploiting a vulnerability on a specific application. There are ii mutual types of CTFs: Jeopardy and Attack-Defence force

Type 1 => Jeopardy CTF

This type includes bug (challenges) like web, digital forensics, contrary engineering and others. Teams or individuals will gain points for any correct claiming they solve. Points are defined depending on challenges difficulty, challenges labeled every bit hard will help you to gain more than points.

Blazon ii => Attack-Defence

Here each team has its network of insecure devices (or just one host). Your staff typically has time to repair the infrastructure, and to set up vulnerabilities.Then you will defend your ain services for defense force points , and hack opponents for getting attack points.

What is a Flag ?

A flag is some sort of text/MD5 hash that you submit to CTF portal to get the challenge points.(e.grand flag{congr4tz_th!5_!5_fl4g})

What is a Writeup?

A writeup is a total documentation on how to solve a certain claiming. Reading writeups will help you to gain more cognition and enhance your CTF skills.Nevertheless, make sure to read the writeup only when you are really stuck in solving the challenge.

Challenge types

Jeopardy fashion CTFs challenges are typically divided into unlike categories. You will find below the most common types

Blazon 1 => Cryptography - This type of challenges include understanding the different encryption algorithms

Type 2 => Digital Forensics - This type of challenges include file format analysis, steganography, memory dump analysis, or network packet capture analysis.

Blazon 3 => Opposite Engineering - This type of challenges include the process of taking compiled code like .exe files or .apk or others and trying to catechumen information technology back into a more man readable format.

Type 4 => Web Security - This type of challenges include discovering vulnerabilities in web applications.

Type 5 => Exploitation - This type of challenges include

exploiting a service to find the flag, the contrary engineering techniques are likewise applied hither in order to analyse the structure and behaviours of the binaries

Type half-dozen => Network Security This blazon of challenges include analysing traffic data similar pcap files and others.

Type 7 => Open Source Cyber Intelligence - This type of challenges include using open source tools to get together information.

What skills are needed to play CTFs?

Playing capture the flag (CTF) competitions might need some basic prerequisite skills. You lot will need to have some bones noesis of networking similar subnetting, TCP/IP, routing and similar. Also, it is important to know some linux commands which will assist y'all in using command line tools on kali linux. In addition to that, basic programming skills are also needed. You might not demand to write code in some types of challenges simply at to the lowest degree yous need to know how to read lawmaking and sympathise information technology. The most important skill you demand to have is to be persistent, you won't be able to solve challenges from the first 24-hour interval. You volition need to practice days and nights to be able to solve your first group of challenges. And then, don't give up easily and go on trying.

Where can I play CTFs ?

There are different websites where yous tin can play online CTFs. The main website to search for the upcoming CTFs is CTFtime.org , this is a calendar for all the upcoming CTF that will happen across the world and on dissimilar platforms. Too, y'all tin check the upcoming competitions on CyberTalents hither . In improver, you can participate in some famous competitions like Google CTF CTF platform created past google

Tools

In order to beginning in capture the flag (CTF) competitions, we have listed some of the basic tools that you can employ ordered by dissimilar challenges categories

WEB

Burp suite : common used tool for testing web applications with several features i of them is burp proxy for intercepting HTTP requests .

Cookie Editor : useful browser extension for editing cookies .

SQLMap : SQL injection and Database Exploitation tool .

DirBuster : directory animal forcing tool .

XSSer : useful tool to detect, exploit and written report XSS vulnerabilities.

Crypto

rsatool : tool used to calculate RSA and RSA-CRT parameters.

CyberChef - Web app for analysing and decoding data.

PkCrack - A tool for Breaking PkZip-encryption.

QuipQuip - An online tool for breaking substitution ciphers or vigenere ciphers (without key).

XORTool - A tool to analyze multi-byte xor ciphers.

Digital Forensics

ExifTool : used for reading, writing and editing meta information in a wide diverseness of files (e.g JPEG, JPG, JPE )

Wireshark : tool for analyzing Network traffic and PCAP files .

linux install : apt-get install wireshark

Brazenness : tool for analyzing audio files (east.1000 .mp3,.wav ,etc).

Foremost : extracting files based on their headers, footers, and internal data structures.

Stegsolve : used for applying unlike techniques on images

Volatility : To investigate retentivity dumps

Opposite

IDA Pro : nigh used Disassembler and Debugger.

Exploitation

DLLInjector : Inject dlls in processes

libformatstr : Simplify format string exploitation.

Metasploit : Penetration testing software

one_gadget : A tool to find the one gadget

Pwntools : CTF Framework for writing exploits

Qira : QEMU Interactive Runtime Analyser

ROP Gadget : Framework for ROP exploitation

V0lt :Security CTF Toolkit

Conclusion

Solving the challenges might exist hard at the commencement, but once you kickoff to practice, bring together the community and compete in some competitions yous will find playing in the capture the flag (CTF) competitions is an effective way to acquire cybersecurity, make yourself and gain admission to jobs.