Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google CTF 2019

capturetheflag.withgoogle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 140 posts

Re: Google CTF 2019

#81

Post by r-w »

ackbar03 wrote: post #77
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. Its not a big page. There's nothing there. Now I'm not a (total) idiot, obviously I can debug it if i have to (and if other people are telling me "there's stuff there, you just can't see it"). If i open it in chrome with extensions turned off or a default mobile browser, stuff now appears, so yeah, its got to do with script permissions and the like. But again, why not just include actual text in the "what is g…

If your having this much issue with figuring out what a ctf is its probably not for you. Googles ctf is pretty damn hard

If their goal was to minimize participation and competition, then they certainly succeeded. I don’t think being unfamiliar with something should ever be outright disqualifying.

Re: Google CTF 2019

#82

Post by koyote »

dysoco wrote: post #70
Tepix wrote: post #43

The emoji virtual machine (step 3 or 4) is cool. I'm trying to understand what it does to speed it up.

I'm on that as well, for me it seems it just decodes some Unicode characters and does arithmetic to print the message, I don't know why it's taking so long or how can I speed it up.

It's calculating prime numbers which is why it's slow.

Now if only I was to work out which prime numbers it wants... :)

Re: Google CTF 2019

#83

Post by viscanti »

AJRF wrote: post #48

Dig at Apple from the third stage of the beginners' quest; "Your first thought is "Why does the display stand need to announce its price? And exactly how much does 999 dollars convert to in Xenonivian Bucklets?"

I wonder if Google will end up buying more of those $999 stands than any other individual customer.

Re: Google CTF 2019

#86

Post by saagarjha »

tambourine_man wrote: post #69
thanhhaimai wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard of this argument often, and I don't quite understand it. It's similar to saying "I'm always amazed at how a country that has the most number of Nobel prize winners has some citizens that can't do calculus" The people that work on Android and Chrome are not the people who work on websites. It's okay to say the website doesn't meet your expectations, but it's better to recognize that those are different pr…

Companies are not countries. People are hired in the first and born in the second. Companies should be concerned when their actions don't match the narrative they are trying to sell about themselves. If the Mobile Web is important to Google (and it should be), it must be a company wide effort. The “that's not my department” excuse doesn't cut it.

"I'm always amazed at how a college that has the most number of Nobel prize winners has some professors that can't do calculus"

Re: Google CTF 2019

#87

Post by ehsankia »

AJRF wrote: post #49
ehsankia wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, the beginner one is definitely higher level that I would've expected a beginner level one to be. Definitely starting with a binary/reversing challenge is already quite a bit more than I'd expected from the very first beginner level.

You really don't need to reverse the binary to pass that one haha. The string isn't obfuscated in the ELF, you can just look at the file in a text editor to see the flag

Haha I feel extremely stupid now! Thanks though, after being unblocked I'm making decent progress, already gotten then next 4 levels. This is really fun for beginners!

Re: Google CTF 2019

#88

Post by [deleted] »

r-w wrote: post #81
ackbar03 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your having this much issue with figuring out what a ctf is its probably not for you. Googles ctf is pretty damn hard

If their goal was to minimize participation and competition, then they certainly succeeded. I don’t think being unfamiliar with something should ever be outright disqualifying.

[deleted]

Re: Google CTF 2019

#89

Post by theemathas »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #44
saagarjha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scroll down

I did. Its not a big page. There's nothing there. Now I'm not a (total) idiot, obviously I can debug it if i have to (and if other people are telling me "there's stuff there, you just can't see it"). If i open it in chrome with extensions turned off or a default mobile browser, stuff now appears, so yeah, its got to do with script permissions and the like. But again, why not just include actual text in the "what is g…

They probably didn't include the text there because there are "FAQ" and "Rules" links in that page, and clicking on those lead to lots of text. They could have made the links more noticeable though.

Re: Google CTF 2019

#90

Post by pjmlp »

AJRF wrote: post #48

Dig at Apple from the third stage of the beginners' quest; "Your first thought is "Why does the display stand need to announce its price? And exactly how much does 999 dollars convert to in Xenonivian Bucklets?"

Their Android team could learn a thing or two about proper framework development from Apple.
Post reply on HN