ToorCon 17 (2015) Potent Pwnables: Advancement in CTF
Channel: tecknicaltom
Date: 29/10/2015

A presentation given at ToorCon 17 in San Diego, CA on Saturday, October 24th 2015 by Marcus Hodges (meta) and Tom Samstag (tecknicaltom)


Potent Pwnables – Advancements in CTF

Capture the Flag (CTF) is the worlds most realistic and challenging arena to prove your skills as a hacker, or learn trying. Students and professionals alike, from all corners of the world, compete regularly in various CTF events as a way to have fun while sharpening their skills. The DEFCON CTF is frequently hailed as the Olympics of Hacking for good reasons. In this talk meta and tecknicaltom will explain the game, describe the challenges, tell stories from the front lines, and provide an overview of the tactics and tools required to win. They will explain the CTF culture and what to expect from different events. If you have never played, you’ll learn where to start and how to practice. If you’ve played in the past, you’ll learn about the modern advancements in CTF and may be surprised at how far the game has evolved. To win, you must be prepared for absolutely anything.

Marcus Hodges
As the Director of Research at Security Innovation, Marcus Hodges (meta) is a technical leader who is passionate about enabling others advance the state of security. Since Marcus graduated the University of Washington with a B.S. in Mathematics in 2006, he has spent the past decade helping organizations expose vulnerabilities and improve the security of their designs. Marcus is a founding member of the Neg9 Capture the Flag (CTF) team and regularly sharpens his Python programming, reverse engineering, exploitation, and cryptography skills through global competitions. He is also the lead architect of a secure Linux distribution and package management system and has a proven ability to bridge the gap between product requirements and successful designs.

Tom Samstag
Tom Samstag (tecknicaltom) is a Senior Security Engineer at Security Innovation in Seattle and member of the Neg9 CTF team. A Perl hacker and C programmer at heart, his interests tend to gravitate towards reverse engineering, exploitation, static analysis, and other bit-fu aspects of software and security.