Security G33k: Symantec Cyber Readiness Challenge

BT got second place in the Symantec Cyber Readiness Challenge- CTF Hacking Competition!

The CTF competition was not something we expected. Before that day, we spent countless nights familiarizing ourselves with Kali and BackTrack and focusing solely on the Network hacking. Of course, we performed our recon in finding out more about similar CTFs by other organizers in the past such as from DEFCon, HITB, Black Hat and read what sort of challenges await us.

So when we arrived, we were quite shocked to see players from big named companies and also from the Big Four joining which made us humble seeing their presence but then again... hackers constantly challenge one another and thats when the fun started!

As a rule of thumb, we cant expose the content of the competition but for those who are joining the Symantec CRC competition, better get yourselves prepared with Web, Network and Database pentest. Be good with the tools used such as Metasploit and NMAP.

It was a full 4 hrs competition that made us exhausted at the end of the hour. Unfortunately, there were also hiccups during the competition and as a personal advice: better use your own dongle rather than using the available made Wifi or LAN network.

We also experienced unethical hackers during capturing the flag. One of the rules is to NOT CHANGE anything that will not allow other players to compete and one of the teams were literally changing the passwords of the accounts they cracked which if reported could be disqualified. There were some tug of war to control the system each one kicking a session from one another.

It was tough but eventually we nailed it. We got second spot and the winner got a Flag more than us! Damn it! But all in all, this was indeed a fun competition that allowed us to hack/crack/pentest a real world scenario...

The BT Team