11. 12. 2023 Mattia Codato Events

WPCTF 2023: Our Journey in Organizing a Capture The Flag Event

On November 25th, in collaboration with the universities of Verona, Padova, Trento, and Bolzano, we hosted the WPCTF event—a thrilling Capture The Flag (CTF) competition that engaged over 50 cybersecurity enthusiasts. In this blog post, we’ll explore into our journey in organizing the event, focusing on the technical aspects that made WPCTF a memorable success.

Website: An Appealing Hub
To present the event in an engaging way, we crafted the WPCTF website using the powerful VueJS framework because, well, we love it! The choice of VueJS allowed us to fashion a seamless and interactive user experience. But there’s more: to access the registration form, participants had to tackle a small challenge, providing them with a sneak peek into the types of challenges awaiting them during the CTF. I won’t spoil the fun by revealing details of the challenge here—go ahead and experience it for yourself on the WPCTF website 😉

CTFd: The Easiest Capture The Flag Platform
For hosting the challenges, we opted for CTFd, an open-source solution. Surprisingly, setting up CTFd was a breeze! However, as CTFd’s appearance didn’t seamlessly integrate with our site, we embarked on a creative journey and crafted a custom theme following detailed documentation. Beginning with the core-beta theme, we effortlessly personalized the look of CTFd, aligning it perfectly with the look of the event.

Docker Challenges: The Right Plugin
The next puzzle on our journey was hosting the challenges, and wouldn’t you know it, many of these were Docker images. Enter the stage: the CTFd-Docker-Challenges plugin, thanks to the open-source community. With a bit of fine-tuning, it stepped up to the plate, enabling us to create and manage containers for each challenge. This approach ensured an isolated, secure, and reproducible gaming environment for participants.

Put all together
Before the big day, we mixed up a concoction of internal tests, a dedicated WiFi network, and a dash of personalized flair with custom hoodies. If you add a collaborative effort between the different teams, what do you get? A fantastic event where participants faced off among last-minute surprises, adding an extra level of excitement. The blend of technology, fierce competition, and a unique atmosphere worked like magic, creating an unforgettable experience.

When the virtual dust settled, we could not help but marvel at the culmination of efforts that made this event a roaring success. Participants dove into the challenges, demonstrated their skills, and exploited all the security vulnerabilities present to achieve the goal.

In the end, we can proudly state that this year’s event was a real success. Thank you to all the participants and all the people who helped organize the event.

Don’t miss next year’s edition