NCL Spring Individual 2023

Last weekend I got the opportunity to participate in the National Cyber League (NCL) Spring 2023 Capture the Flag (CTF) Individual competition. It was the first time I participated in this CTF and I had a ton of fun solving these challenges. These challenges ranged from using open source intellegence to breaking hidden codes inside another code. I mean who couldn’t find something like that fun right? I know for nerds like myself these scenarios are almost dream like. But anyways let me share my results of the competition.

While my goal prior to starting the competition was to complete every challenge, I soon realized that my goal was a bit unrealistic. I ended up completing 73% of the challenges in the competition with 1,725 points. That put me in the top 5% of the 6,214 players that competed.

Competitions like these are a great tool for cybersecurity enthusiasts. It provides a platform for learners to measure they’re skills quantitatively and see what areas they are strong in and inversely what areas they are weak on. The NCL CTF is also very unique because at the end of the event it will give you a player card with all your official stats which you could show off in a resume, LinkedIn, etc. I’d say that the biggest thing I enjoyed about the competition is being given the opportunity to learn what I need to work on and also grow in that certain skill with a small time window if I plan to solve that specific challenge.

For detailed statistics here is a breakdown of the nine domains the competition had and the completion rate I had for each of the domains:

• Open Source Intelligence (100%)
• Cryptography (85%)
• Password Cracking (73%)
• Log Analysis (46%)
• Network Traffic Analysis (93%)
• Forensics (67%)
• Scanning & Reconnaissance (42%)
• Enumeration & Exploitation (78%)
• Web Application Exploitation (33%)

Overall, I highly recommend that anyone that is currently working or wants to work in the cybersecurity field participate in future events offered by NCL. Unfortunately due to the non disclosure agreement we agreed to by signing up for the CTF, I cannot share specific details about challenges and how I went about solving them. I’ll be able to discuss some of this information with the WGU Cybersecurity club but that’s because we are preparing for the team competition that will follow this event. I’ll keep you guys updated with more information, and I hope you were able to get something from this post.

Peace, -Ja7T0rr3s!