Date: December 3, 2010, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM PST
Format: Attack-Defense
Teams: 72 (~900 students from 16 countries)
Winner: Plaid Parliament of Pwning (PPP), Carnegie Mellon University
In the 2010 iCTF, the participating teams were part of a coalition of nations engaged in cyber-war with the rogue, corrupted nation of Litya — an anagram of Italy.
Teams represented allied nations tasked with undermining Litya's digital infrastructure through cyber-attacks, while simultaneously defending their own national systems from Litya's retaliation. The scenario reflected the early 2010s discourse around nation-state cyber-warfare and critical infrastructure attacks.
Litya's infrastructure painted a picture of a corrupt, leaky government: a social network, a dating site, a WikiLeaks-inspired document leak service, and a botnet. Teams could also pay bribes to temporarily unblock their own firewall — a game economy feature unique to this edition.
| Name | Category | Description |
|---|---|---|
lityabook |
Web | Litya social network (Facebook parody) — Python |
lityahot |
Web | Litya dating/matchmaking service |
lityaleaks |
Web | WikiLeaks-inspired document repository (MediaWiki 1.15.5) |
idreamofjeannie |
Binary | Custom TCP service, port 2009 |
overtcovert |
Binary | Covert/overt channel challenge (C + Java) |
applet |
Binary | Java applet service |
bincgi |
Binary | Binary CGI |
perlcgi |
Web | Perl CGI |
weirdtcp |
Network | Non-standard TCP protocol |
icmbd |
Network | ICMP-based daemon |
mostwanted |
Web | Most-wanted criminals list |
| Name | Category | Description |
|---|---|---|
bot |
Network | Botnet agent — Python 2 heartbeat client |
bribe |
Web | Bribery payment service — Python 2 HTTP |
flagsubmission |
Network | Flag capture and submission |
scorekeeper |
Web | Central PHP scoring API |
iCTF 2010 introduced a game economy: teams earned points for capturing flags and could spend in-game money to bribe Litya's "firewall" into temporarily unblocking their network. The scorekeeper coordinated all transactions with component credentials:
| Component | Credential |
|---|---|
challenge |
makeyourchallengecount |
mothership |
botnetseverywhere |
firewall |
iseeeverything |
scorebot |
getthatflagdude |
scoreboard |
gimmethescores |
| Path | Contents | Size |
|---|---|---|
site/ |
Original competition website | — |
dumps/ictf2010pcap.tar.gz |
Full network traffic captures | ~23 GB |
dumps/ictf2010.bot.tar.gz |
Bot service VM | 270 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.bribe.tar.gz |
Bribe service VM | 343 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.flagsubmission.tar.gz |
Flag submission VM | 457 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.information.tar.gz |
Flag submission logs by team | 40 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.lityaleaks.tar.gz |
LityaLeaks VM | 535 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.scoreboard.tar.gz |
Scoreboard VM | 657 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.scorebot.tar.gz |
Scorebot VM | 677 MB |
dumps/ictf2010.scorekeeper.tar.gz |
Scorekeeper VM | 462 MB |
vms/ictf2010.services.tar.gz |
All per-team services VM | 4.6 GB |
pictures/ |
Event photographs | — |
ucsb_ctfscorebot5.tar.gz |
CTF Scorebot 5 source | — |
- First iCTF with an in-game economy (bribe payments, money transfers)
- The Scorebot 5 (
ucsb_ctfscorebot5.tar.gz) is historically significant — used across multiple iCTF editions - "Litya" is an anagram of "Italy" — a nod to the UCSB Security Lab's Italian roots
- PPP (CMU) took first place, winning a USD $1,000 prize (sponsored by IEEE S&P + Adobe)