Huntress 2025 CTF

There’s no better way to learn than by doing, and the Huntress 2025 CTF competition just wrapped! A great mix of different challenges, but my favorites were the malware category.

While this was only my second CTF I am proud of the final result, finishing at 225 out of 6,869. It was a great learning experience, with 72 challenges spread throughout October’s 31 days.

Day 1

Warm ups

There are several warmups they provided for day 1, which I like because it gives you a chance to stretch your legs but aren’t necessarily difficult. It took me some time to solve all of them, however.

I’ve long been considering a change in career, as I’ve been realizing both my skill areas and my passion are more aligned with reverse engineering than architecture.

My 38th birthday is approaching, and I think it is time to make a go of it.

I have been thinking of what the first step needs to be, and I’ve arrived at a decision to take the OSCP certification.

This is not exactly aligned with my main interests, but there are a few reasons why I think its a good starting point. First it will serve as a survey of the knowledge I have built up doing hobby work over the past 20 years. Second it is well respected by industry so I can gain some much needed resume fodder, as a career change is tough to bootstrap.

Defcon 33 Wrap-up

I got home from Defcon 33 midnight a day ago, caught up on rest yesterday / teleworked, and finally today I am putting together my thoughts.

This year I took pretty detailed notes during the convention to track what I did and who I talked to as much as possible. I focused on socialization over actual talks and presentations, mainly because socialization and networking has been a weak area for me.

Snackey is an annual competition at defcon going back a couple years, I think to DC30. I have been interested in trying it ever since I first heard of it but this year, at DC33, was the first time I tried.

This year they provided a file download and no hints about the challenges except somewhat inscrutable challenge names. I was excited to jump in but I hadn’t brought my laptop from my hotel room so I was looking at the file on my phone.