CyberStudents’ Advent of CTF Write-Ups

Advent of CTF is an annual CTF competition organized by CyberStudents, an online organization and community focused on cybersecurity education. Each competition features beginner-oriented challenges that are released daily in December leading up to Christmas. Advent of CTF premiered in 2024 and is expected to continue annually with new challenges for the foreseeable future.

This repository contains community write-ups for all Advent of CTF challenges. The write-ups are organized by year and day, with each challenge's details, hints, and solutions provided. These write-ups serve as a resource for participants to learn from and improve their skills in cybersecurity.

The write-ups featured here are written by players and are chosen by the respective challenge developer. In the event that no suitable write-ups were submitted for a challenge, the challenge developer may provide an official write-up.

There is also a write-up division in the competition. All write-ups submitted by players are graded by the respective challenge developer who are looking for clarity, completeness, educational value, creativity, and explanation of every step in their challenge-solving and planning process.

Discussions around each challenge can be found in the Discord server under the archived Advent of CTF channel for each year. Players are encouraged to share their solutions, insights, and questions there. Challenge developers may also provide clarifications, intended solutions, and additional hints in these channels.

2024

Day	Title	Category	Points	Challenge Author	Write-up Author
1	Logical Exclusivity	Forensics	30	GodderE2D	zarnex
2	screaming	Reverse engineering	40	Vip3r	zarnex
3	ElfTV	Reverse engineering	55	Vip3r	zarnex
4	long gone	Forensics	75	Vip3r	dharneesh5555
5	Rusty Lock	Reverse engineering	110	Logix	raul_26
6	Epochrypt	Cryptography	70	Vip3r	zarnex
7	Apple Fanatic	Web exploitation	60	GodderE2D	dharneesh5555
8	vuln research	OSINT	45	Vip3r	dharneesh5555
9	resa?	Cryptography	80	Vip3r	zarnex
10	flag from wish	Binary exploitation	90	Kolmus	zarnex
11	Festive Encoding	Cryptography	55	GodderE2D	dharneesh5555
12	Letter To Santa	Forensics	85	Logix	zarnex
13	Disoriented Santa	OSINT	100	GodderE2D	dharneesh5555
14	angry elf	Reverse engineering	50	Vip3r	.jstr_
15	JETS	Web exploitation	70	GodderE2D	.jstr_
16	Jingle Bell ROP	Binary exploitation	105	Vip3r	elijah5399
17	Santa's Plane	OSINT	80	Logix	.jstr_
18	trng	Reverse engineering	100	Kolmus	raul_26
19	interns	Cryptography	150	Vip3r	zarnex
20	Lost Santa	OSINT	80	Logix	raul_26
21	hpjl	Binary exploitation	125	Kolmus	Kolmus
22	K.U.N.A.L Consulting	Web exploitation	130	GodderE2D	GodderE2D
23	help	Binary exploitation	150	GodderE2D	Kolmus
24	ELForms	Web exploitation	130	GodderE2D	GodderE2D
25	House of Santa Claus	Binary exploitation	200	Kolmus	Kolmus

License

All write-ups are licensed under CC BY 4.0.