Flare-On 9

⌈2022 Nov 17⌋



A bit about myself

I’ve reversed stuff for a while but I’ve never been too serious about it. Like many people, I started wanting to hack and/or understand how games worked, so as a kid, the first-ever tool I had contact with was Cheat Engine, but I never got any further than what a script kiddie would.

In-depth reversing came way later in my life. Not long ago I realized IT is truly the career I want for my life. Hacking is something that always piqued my curiosity since a kid, but I never got as deep into it as I did with software development.

Around a few years ago, even though it took me over 2 decades of my life, I finally realized infosec is a career that I really love. After that, I started to study it more and a few months later I heard about Flare-On. At first, I was sure finishing it was impossible because even though I don’t consider myself a beginner, I also don’t see myself too far from that. Not to mention it is the first ever CTF I would play. Surprisingly though, I not only finished this year but also finished at #180, which is a placement I am very happy with.

I’m in the process of writing my writeups for this year and you can check the links below. (Implying my lazy ass can ever get to finish them since I’ve pretty much forgotten 70% of the CTF already. Remind myself from the future to write my writeups right after I finish the challenges and not over a month later!)


Writeups:

  1. flaredle
  2. PixelPoker
  3. magic8ball
  4. darn_mice
  5. t8
  6. alamode
  7. to-do
  8. to-do
  9. to-do
  10. to-do
  11. to-do


My favorite challenge was the 9th one, mostly because I’ve never gotten myself into studying in-depth encryption and the challenge finally made me do it. It’s also the reason I’m reading the book Serious Cryptography, so hey, I might’ve found a subject I really like too :)

Now even though I like C# and it’s one of my main languages, I still couldn’t help but dislike the 8th challenge. I appreciate the technology behind it, and I find the obfuscation interesting, but I lowkey think I now have PTSD from spending 16h a day for almost a week on that. The way the communication with the C2 of the backdoor was coded is something that I really enjoyed though. Simple but surprisingly brilliant!



Overall I loved the CTF and I’m very thankful for the experience. The knowledge I got is immeasurable and it pointed toward a lot of subjects I noticed I’m lacking. I didn’t have any difficulty in reversing the native binaries, but #7, #8, and #9 showed me I have a looooot of stuff to learn! Thank you to Mandiant and all the Challenges Authors and I hope to play the next year as well!