W4500 Cyber Security

Within these castle walls be forged Mavens of Computer Science ...

— Merlin, The Coder

What is Cyber Security?

Cyber Security is the protection and hardening of computers and their software from attacks from malicious individuals called hackers. Cybersecurity is extremely important, now more than ever, because of the growing influence of global computing and internet access.

Capture the Flag

A Capture the Flag (CTF) competition requires individuals or teams to complete a series of cybersecurity-related problems in the allotted time. These problems will each consist of a hidden flag (a string of text) that must be found using hacking techniques. CTF's are useful for learning about vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. There are different kinds of problems one may encounter in a CTF:

• Cryptography: In a cryptography problem, one must decode a hidden message.
• Forensics: Forensics problems offer a wide range of tasks but often require one to use basic computer knowledge to find information hidden in a file or directory.
• Reverse Engineering: Reverse engineering problems require one to understand how a given code works in order to exploit it.
• Web Exploitation: In a web exploitation problem, one must exploit a website using a wide variety of methods.
• Binary Exploitation: This category challenges one to exploit an executable file.

Helpful Hint

The following Wikis in the W4500 Pathway correspond to CTF challenges. These pages will contain specific information about various exploits found in these challenges.