The University of Alabama Capture the Flag Competition
The University of Alabama Capture the Flag Competition 2021 (UACTF) is sponsored by
the University of Alabama’s Computer Science Department, Regions, Crimson Defense
Cyber Security Club, and the Digital Forensics and Control Systems Security Lab. UACTF
2021 will be a Jeopardy-style Capture the Flag Competition. There will be several
categories to choose from with each category including easy, medium, and difficult
challenges worth a varying amount of points. Clues will be available to help teams with
solving the challenges, but these clues will cost the team points. The teams’ objective is
to solve the challenges to score as many points as possible.
Although UACTF is in the style of a competition, this is a fun educational exercise. There
are opportunities for students at all skill levels. Through UACTF, students will be provided
with opportunities to collaborate, learn, and be exposed to a different way of thinking
about cyber security. This will include thinking about possible careers in the cyber
security field.
The material in this guide has been collected from several sources across the Internet. This guide will provide teams with a common starting point for preparing for UACTF and is not all inclusive of the challenges involved in UACTF. UACTF is not a hacking contest. Think of UACTF as more of a puzzle solving challenge with a cyber security theme. Below is a list of topics that might be seen during UACTF. This should not be considered a comprehensive list of the types of challenges that will be seen during the competition.
- Binary exploitation
- Code-breaking and decoding
- Cryptography
- Database security & SQL injection attacks
- Digital forensics
- Email analysis
- File analysis
- Network traffic analysis
- Programming
- Reverse engineering
- Social engineering
- Website security
The following provides additional information and links for some of the challenge types to assist the students in preparing for UACTF 2021.