Sixteen: CTF Club

Starting this past summer, I have co-founded and became the first president of Northeastern’s new CTF Club. CTF Club, unlike what many people have thought, is NOT a physical capture-the-flag club. I was under the guise that most people, especially Computer Science students, knew what a CTF was. To my surprise, it was much less well-known than I thought. Nonetheless, our club is based around cybersecurity CTFs, which are competitions that go a little bit like this:

1. You get a list of “challenges” – a web page, a program, even something like a list of numbers (it can be anything!) – which is intentionally vulnerable in some way.
2. You figure out what that vulnerability is.
3. You exploit said vulnerability.
4. You get a “flag” which you redeem for points. The more difficult the challenge, the higher the points.
5. The team with the most points wins.

It’s simple, fun, and can be extremely difficult and rewarding. The point of CTF Club is to spread the fun of these competitions, teach the student body how to participate in CTFs and how to solve the challenges, host actual CTFs for the student body (we have already hosted two this semester, with one more on the way!), and act as a place where anyone interested in CTFs can talk to other passionate students and even create teams for real CTFs. As President, my job is to lead the club. I have learned a lot about leadership in my short time as president of a collegiate club, one of those lessons being that the leader is not always right! Another big responsibility of mine is challenge creation. I am responsible for making many of the challenges that our students are faced with in competitions and general meetings. Soon, I will populate a GitHub repository with all of the challenges I have made, and provide write-ups for learning. I will link that to this website, as well. At the end of the day, CTFs are supposed to be fun learning experiences, and the CTF club exists to promote that. CTF Club has already brought together a wonderful, talented students. I hope to further grow the club and do my best to make the experience fun and worthwhile.