Due to the rescheduling of Backdoor 2015 (due to cricket, blegh) I only got about 2 hours to play it. It seemed like a good variety of challenges and I think I would have got 7 or 8 done had it not been on a weekday when I had a tonne of other commitments. Anyway I got started with this challenge, it was easy but fun but only worth 70 points and In my opinion there were a lot of easier challenges worth more points. Still I got stuck down the rabbit hole anyway.

I haven’t ever done a mobile challenge before so I thought I’d give this a try as it was one of the earliest challenges made available on the 0ctf site when it began. The clue was only this:

What a strange CTF this one was. Judging by all the comments on CTFtime a lot of people couldn’t get past the registration page. I myself registered ok, it was in French but Google translate got the message across. When I began the CTF I immediately noticed that this was a challenge for beginners. That’s great I do need to brush up on my basic skills.

After a challenging enough “Warm Up” challenge at BCTF2015 which involved cracking a poorly thought out RSA encryption, the next challenge we decided to tackle was the weak_enc challenge worth only 200 points. I don’t normally do crypto but the warmup challenge really got me in the mood so, here we go!

Our first time doing Vancouver BSides which was an event said to be aimed at beginners and students. I was expecting a fun and medium challenge but I found it to be trickier than expected and where I knew the general direction of the solutions for a number of problems I didn’t get enough time to focus on them during the middle of the week where it was held.