I’m super excited to be writing my first CTF challenge writeup! This CTF was a lot of fun, and I learned some new skills! If you have questions about a challenge or one of my explanations feel free to poke me: @CharCharBonkles Table of Contents (The challenges I solved): Linux Talking to the Dead 1 Talking to the Dead 2 Talking to the Dead 3 Talking to the Dead 4 Programming Message in an Array Stego Ghost Hunter Blasphemy Cryptography Hail Caesar!

Crypto? Never roll your own. Author’s note: The purpose of this post is to provide an introduction to cryptography, ciphers, and encoding techniques commonly used in capture the flag (CTF) challenges. It’s the resource I would have wanted when I was approaching my first CTF cryptography challenges! I provide examples of ciphertext (or encoded text) to help the build intuition that will help with cipher recognition! In my opinion, that’s the hardest part of solving CTF crypto challenges!