How to participate the CTF

Team

Team size is limited to 5

Laptop

Bring your own laptop! We also recommend you come with a smartphone, multi-sockets, a soldering iron, a variety of USB cables (micro USB, USB-C...) and any of your favorite hardware gear (dongles, sniffers, HydraBus, UART to USB, RF equipment...).

Software

Bring your favorite software (disassemblers, development tools, hexadecimal viewers, virtual machines, kali, exegol, pwntools, AI etc).

Wifi

Challenges will be accessible via wifi. Make sure you can access wifi on your laptop.

Schedule

The CTF automatically starts at 11.00 and finishes at 19.00 (unless we have a big issue!).
Between 10.00 and 11.00, take a seat: downstairs if you want activity and adrenaline, upstairs if you want calm and concentration (no music). If you have no team, watch for tables labeled "al0ne" they are reserved for participants with no team.
At the end of the CTF, come and congratulate winners! It's also the best time to get solution of challenges. After around 19.30 though, we are sorry we have to push you out but we need to clean and pack. See you next time, and thanks for coming. Don't forget to give us feedback: we value it.

Scoreboard

Both the scoreboard and challenge descriptions are available at the beginning of the CTF on ctf.ph0wn.org. The scoreboard may be available ranging from a few minutes to a few days before: register your user account, join a team etc. But the challenges will not be available before the CTF begins

Challenge devices

Equipment is intentionally hidden before the beginning of the CTF. After, there are 3 sorts of equipment:

  1. Devices to flag. Usually, it's 1-3 equipment attached to a table. Don't bring them to your team's table. Those must stay there. Come with your laptop (or else) to interact with the equipment. There are no booking slots, but usually we won't allow any team to stay there for more than 5-10 minutes (depending on demand).
  2. Devices to play a challenge. When we have 10 or more items, if there is no sign that says otherwise, you may borrow the equipment, use it, and bring it back when you have finished. It's important that you bring it back when you are no longer working on the challenge, because others may need it... And it's also very important that you bring it back at the end of the CTF: we re-use them + sometimes we use equipment as prizes!
  3. Specific equipment to borrow from the staff. You forgot to bring your favorite USB cable? We can probably lend one. But please, bring it back, very often it's our personal equipment.