24-Hour Capture the Flag Challenge
Welcome to The Hacker’s Gauntlet CTF — a 24-hour cybersecurity challenge designed for PESU I/O students who are ready to sharpen their skills, break systems (ethically), and think like real attackers.
This CTF contains beginner-friendly challenges crafted to introduce students to:
- How real-world vulnerabilities emerge
- How attackers exploit them
- How defenders should think to prevent them
No prior CTF experience was required — just curiosity, persistence, and a willingness to experiment.
The challenges are organized across multiple domains of cybersecurity:
| Track | Focus |
|---|---|
| 🔐 Cryptography | Weak crypto, XOR mistakes, bad modes, key reuse |
| 🐳 Docker | Layer inspection, artifact recovery, insecure image practices |
| 🕵️ Forensics | Hidden artifacts, bitwise operations, steganography |
| 🧬 GitHub | Metadata leaks, commit history secrets |
| 🤖 LLM Jailbreaking | Prompt engineering, safety bypasses, social manipulation |
| 🌍 OSINT | Investigating digital footprints and hidden info |
| 🌐 Web | Client-side trust failures and insecure design |
| 📡 PCAP / Networking | Traffic analysis, covert channels, protocol abuse |
Each category is designed to help participants build practical hacking intuition.
🟢 Beginner-Friendly
🧭 Designed for learning, not gatekeeping
🎯 Each challenge teaches a single vulnerability clearly and intentionally
Some challenges may require additional creativity — but all are solvable with fundamental tools and reasoning.
By completing this CTF, participants should be able to:
- Recognize common cybersecurity weaknesses
- Exploit them safely in controlled environments
- Understand why the vulnerability exists
- Apply defensive thinking to avoid repeating the mistake in real systems
All final answers follow the format: THG{...}