About

A CTF (Capture The Flag) is a hacking competition where the aim is to steal or capture flags by exploiting security issues in applications, solving puzzles and decyphering files. Often, these competitions expect a high level of technical skill and experience, which makes them less accessible for beginners and most students.

With our CTF, we wish to make these kinds of competitions much more accessible by offering entry level challenges as well as more advanced challenges, and handing out lots of prizes. This way, we hope to inspire young students, especially bachelor students, to develop an interest in cybersecurity. And of course, who doesn't like a goodiebag and a real chance to win a prize.

The ULYSSIS CTF has room for 20 teams of 3 to 4 members. While some challenges can be solved with basic googling, we recommend that your team members at least have some basic knowledge of one programming language (Python, Java, C#, PHP, it doesn't matter). While we hope to attract a diverse set of teams, we have chosen not to accept students with excessive skills (e.g. doctoral students, post-docs, etc. see Rules). Furthermore, to make sure that we don't have to turn away new registrations while registered teams might not show up, we have decided to ask for a security deposit of 20 euros per team. You need to pay this deposit to make your registration final. You will of course get your money back after the competition.

On the practical side of things, we expect every member of a team to bring their own computer. If you decide to bring a desktop instead of a laptop computer, you will have to bring your own keyboard, mouse and screen. It is important to keep in mind that during the competition, the challenges will only be available over a wired network. You will need to use the official wireless network of the university to do research. We therefore suggest that at least one (preferably all) members of your team have a wired ethernet port on their laptop. You are of course free to use a USB ethernet adapter.

The competition takes place on Tuesday 27 March 2018 on the first floor of the 200S building at the Arenberg Campus, Heverlee. You can easily park your bike in front of the building. If you're not familiar with the Arenberg 200 Campus, you can always take a look on this map. We expect everyone to arrive at 19h and the event will end shortly before midnight. If you might be late or need to leave early, please get in touch with us as soon as possible. Teams that are not complete without prior notice will sadly be disqualified. Please make sure to read the Rules.

Before, after and especially during the competition, you can easily communicatie with ULYSSIS as well as other teams using IRC. We've created a #ctf channel on irc.ulyssis.org.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us at ulyssis@ulyssis.org.