I’m super excited to be writing my first CTF challenge writeup! This CTF was a lot of fun, and I learned some new skills! If you have questions about a challenge or one of my explanations feel free to poke me: @CharCharBonkles Table of Contents (The challenges I solved): Linux Talking to the Dead 1 Talking to the Dead 2 Talking to the Dead 3 Talking to the Dead 4 Programming Message in an Array Stego Ghost Hunter Blasphemy Cryptography Hail Caesar!

Crypto? Never roll your own. Author’s note: The purpose of this post is to provide an introduction to cryptography, ciphers, and encoding techniques commonly used in capture the flag (CTF) challenges. It’s the resource I would have wanted when I was approaching my first CTF cryptography challenges! I provide examples of ciphertext (or encoded text) to help the build intuition that will help with cipher recognition! In my opinion, that’s the hardest part of solving CTF crypto challenges!

Author’s Note: I loooooooove databases and I want to spread the knowledge around! This is the first in what will hopefully be a series on databases, with a focus on providing foundational information and context necessary to understand and perform attacks against databases… as well as defend against them! Shoutout to Dr. Poole, whose amazing database class got me hooked forever! <3 Table of Contents: Terminology Schema Stuff Types of Relationships One to One (1-1) One To Many (1-M) Many to Many (M-N) Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) Basic SQL SELECT, WHERE, LIKE, AND, OR, NOT Joins and Union Inner Join Left Join Full Join (Full Outer Join) Union SQL Injection Vulnerable Code from DVWA The Anatomy of a UNION based SQL Injection Additional Resources Sources Terminology “Words, words words.

We’ve just passed the time of year when we all start reflecting on the past year or so, and in this process of reflection I’ve realized that I’ve changed quite a bit over the last couple of years. I’ll be graduating from college this spring if all goes well, so I’ve been reflecting on my time in college. I realized that the biggest change in my life since my freshman year has been a seemingly simple shift of perspective: I’ve started focusing less on perfection and more on excellence.

My grandpa was an engineer and a farmer, and as a kid I spent many summer weeks at my grandparents’ farm. I was introduced to centrifugal and centripetal forces as a youngster while helping my grandpa feed the many farm cats – after filling up their bowls with calf milk replacer, he’d fill the bucket with water and spin it in a vertical circle. To my amazement, the water didn’t come pouring out even though the bucket was upside down!