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Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

kabir.au

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Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#351

Post by acters »

worble wrote: post #318
graceful6800 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is the top comment at the moment: CTF stands for Capture The Flag. Personally I have never, ever heard that concept referred to by the initialism. Granted, it's almost never come up in my circles, so... shrug

CTF is a game mode for popular online games like halo (or at least, that's how I know it), so paragraphs like > My first CTF was HCKSYD, a 48-hour solo CTF. I full solved it and won in 2 hours. I was completely hooked. That led me to win DownUnderCTF, Australia's largest CTF, with Blitzkrieg multiple times. Blitzkrieg was one of Australia's strongest teams at the time. I later joined TheHackersCrew, an international…

Yeah, but we have AI now, we don't need our blog posts to over explain or state what it all means to general audiences. The author name-drops a bunch of CTF events hosted by a variety of independent organizations and name-drops well-known teams.

To help everyone, this Capture The Flag is specifically Cybersecurity adjacent, there is a Wikipedia article on it as the top Google search result for me when searching "CTF". This is why the acronym is used, because searching for the full will get you to the wrong "sport" vs the cybersecurity one.

I don't want to explain what a CTF is. look at the Wikipedia article. It is there for a good reason.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#352

Post by ergonaught »

bawolff wrote: post #297
Nifty3929 wrote: post #296

Must I beg to have an acronym spelled out a least once, the first time it's used? Even if you assume 90% of readers already know, the other 10% (including me, in this case) will thank you, it doesn't take much effort, and it expands the reach of your communication or idea. Exceptions for cases where the acronym is just so well known that a lot of people don't even know what it stands for even though they know the con…

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for. More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on…

You could have just said “No”, if you had to say anything at all, rather than continuing the behavior.

Actively rude.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#354

Post by fragmede »

tannertech wrote: post #283
voxl wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that a human will learn, given any materials including LLMs, but only if they truly desire to learn. We've had MOOCs, gigantic libraries, all full of free information. You can obtain a PhD level understanding in any technical field of your choice today just by consistently going to the library and consistently applying yourself. It's not unlike going to the gym, and we see how many people do that regul…

The annoying thing is a PhD level understanding does not get you jobs.

I don't have a PhD, but "you're overqualified" is something I've heard my PhD having friends said to them.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#355

Post by tempaccount5050 »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #205
baq wrote: post #44

Replace ‘CTF’ with ‘high school’ or ‘university’ and you’ve described the total slow motion collapse of education; the only saving grace is that most of it requires in person presence. We’ve figured out the human replacement pipeline it seems, but we haven’t figured out the eduction part. LLMs can be wonderful teachers, but the temptation to just tell it ‘do it for me’ is almost impossible to resist.

Everything we've learned in the last 10 years is telling us that computers do not help human education in the slightest. We remember better when we write with pen and paper. We learn better with whiteboards and paper books. The simple answer: Remove most computing from education entirely. Blue composition books, pencils, whiteboards is what trains humans. Calculators are helpful perhaps but it is quite possible that…

Nah, I wrote physics programs on my computer at home in high school and it absolutely helped with my schooling. Yeah, maybe iPad apps aren't the best things in schools but you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Computers bad is simply not true.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#356

Post by toraway »

Grimburger wrote: post #20

Very 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.

Okay, but none of that is actually responsive to what the article is discussing, which is competitive CTFs. There's not a single criticism of using AI for actual security research in anything they wrote and they mention being a heavy user of GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.5 Pro so belittling the author's experience to defend LLMs wasn't actually necessary.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#357

Post by fragmede »

anigbrowl wrote: post #265
josh2600 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it important that a dev can’t do fizzbuzz without ai? If they can ship code that matches a spec, why does it matter if they’re using ai or not? Genuinely curious.

Why hire them at all then, just ask them what their favorite AI is and use that

Because I'm busy already doing that and need a copy of me/close enough to one, to do more of that.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#358

Post by trescenzi »

worble wrote: post #318
graceful6800 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is the top comment at the moment: CTF stands for Capture The Flag. Personally I have never, ever heard that concept referred to by the initialism. Granted, it's almost never come up in my circles, so... shrug

CTF is a game mode for popular online games like halo (or at least, that's how I know it), so paragraphs like > My first CTF was HCKSYD, a 48-hour solo CTF. I full solved it and won in 2 hours. I was completely hooked. That led me to win DownUnderCTF, Australia's largest CTF, with Blitzkrieg multiple times. Blitzkrieg was one of Australia's strongest teams at the time. I later joined TheHackersCrew, an international…

It's also a game people play in person as well. It's the same as the Halo version except you tag each other instead of shooting. It's really fun to play in big open areas with large teams.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#359

Post by Drupon »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #296

Must I beg to have an acronym spelled out a least once, the first time it's used? Even if you assume 90% of readers already know, the other 10% (including me, in this case) will thank you, it doesn't take much effort, and it expands the reach of your communication or idea. Exceptions for cases where the acronym is just so well known that a lot of people don't even know what it stands for even though they know the con…

[dead]

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#360

Post by viccis »

tptacek wrote: post #330

A big fraction of the comments on this thread are about the impact of cheating on competitive games. It's important to understand that automating CTF challenges isn't usually cheating . It's normally part of CTF culture. The better teams have toolboxes ready to shred the early challenges; it's not a level playing field and was never intended to be. (The author of the piece understands this; I think they're broadly ri…

This is already addressed in the blog post about the fast that frontier LLMs have moved to being able to solve the kind of problem you'd expect a talented amateur or mid-level pro to do (aka top level CTF problems)
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