MY EXPERIENCE AS A JUDGE ON TRACELABS CTF SEARCH PARTY 2022
This was my first year being a judge in the Tracelabs CTF search party competition. To be able to fully judge the submissions that came in, I had to situate myself in the shoes of the CTF players, the techniques they will use, and the tools that they will be using in the span of the contest. In achieving these, I had my virtual machines set up using Customized VM from Tracelabs, set up sock poppets accounts, and also made sure my tracks were covered. Before the CTF, I was aware that we will at some point be overwhelmed with the submissions that will come in. Indeed it did take me by surprise when the contest started. We had everything going easily and quietly as my teams were finding it difficult to submit flags but after 15 minutes, submissions started trickling in. They submitted from social media sites, especially Facebook and IG, and Twitter. I was impressed by how the players were able to map out a relationship tree of the subjects based on social media posts. CTF players were clever at some point as they escalated some flags to win more points which sometimes I had to give them clues about how to make certain submissions qualify for a category. I am as also well aware that players will be coming at me demanding explanations as to why their submissions were denied and after explaining to them my reasons, they reverted and made the right submissions. The CTF…
