used to see some really good CTF videos show up on youtube and now nothing like that shows up on the feed
Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
11–20 of 502 posts
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#12I have normally found any sort of timed technical competition intimidating. Even so, about 6 or 7 years ago, after being persuaded by a colleague, I participated in a few CTFs. I am glad I did, back when this type of thing still meant something. I have kept a screenshot from one of the CTFs that I am quite fond of: https://susam.net/files/blog/ctf-2019.png
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#13What is CTF? And why is the cyber security world filled with silly gaming references?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag_(cybersecurit...
Its a war game reference I guess?
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#14What is CTF? And why is the cyber security world filled with silly gaming references?
Capture The Flag is a cybersecurity game where the organizers set up a bunch of intentionally vulnerable computer systems with a "flag" on them, a string that's "supposed to be" secret but is accessible through exploiting the vulnerabilities. This may be a line in /etc/password, a string in memory, a field in a database, whatever. The goal of the game is to hack into the computer systems, find ("capture") the flag, then copy/paste it into the organiser's scoreboard website to prove that you solved that particular challenge.
It's pretty fun. Or at least it was, back when you had some sense that your competitors were competing on an even playing field and just beat you because they were better than you.
I wouldn't say the name is a "gaming reference", it's just a descriptive name for a game.
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#15>I started playing CTFs in 2021 >and the old game is not coming back For many people the CTF scene was already dead in 2021 because it had turned into something unrecognisable. In reality it’s just different.
Well, I had to google what CTF means (capture the flag, a hacking competition), so surely cannot judge here, but the text indicates that with AI some things are very different today: "That makes open CTFs pay-to-win. The more tokens you can throw at a competition, the faster you can burn down the board. Specialised cybersecurity models like alias1 by Alias Robotics are becoming less relevant compared to general front…
Isn’t that the bitter lesson in a nutshell? “Specialised cybersecurity models … are becoming less relevant compared to general frontier LLMs.”
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#16[deleted]
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#17“solve”, why not solution? Like “spend” and not expenditure, why use the verb as a noun and not care about grammar?
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#18You could make it offline and with provided laptops only, just like with the competitive CS2 scene.
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#19I don't do CTF's but took part at the security workshop for fun ~2 years with my Android phone only. I was first with the first simple challenge, but then couldnt continue because my phone was just too limited. But I watched what the others did. And a young Indian guy did everything with ChatGPT then. I found it silly, but amusing, because he actually got second. There was no Codex nor Claude then. Nowadays it must be dead for real, because I would solve everything with my agents, as I do in the real world.
Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format
#20Very impressed that OP has gone from starting university in 2021 to becoming a Senior Security Engineer.
It's an incredibly exciting time in security research in my humble old man opinion.
Think the cadence of new exploits is perhaps a good measure of that rather than subjective thoughts by anyone regardless of experience.