Date: March 22, 2013, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM PDT
Format: Attack-Defense (with ZDI exploit submission framework)
Note: This edition ran in March 2013 (delayed from the 2012 school year); the local directory is named ictf12.
Welcome to the National Cyberdefense Corps! You, along with other qualified applicants, have just been hired to secure the critical infrastructure of your country.
In the 2012 iCTF competition, teams had to attack critical infrastructure components — SCADA systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition). SCADA systems control physical industrial processes: power grids, water treatment plants, chemical manufacturing, transportation networks.
The fictional scenario: Sicilian hackers are on the offensive, threatening to compromise your nation's critical services. You must defend your country's SCADA infrastructure while simultaneously developing exploits to attack other nations' systems — selling those exploits to the Zebra Dwarf Institution (ZDI), a sort of underground vulnerability clearinghouse, for points and residuals.
This edition introduced the ZDI exploit submission framework used in several subsequent iCTF editions:
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Detection scoring: The organizers push attack flow descriptions (src/dst IP, port, timestamp, ID) to each team. Teams claim which connections are attacks. Correct detections → points; false positives → point penalties. Detections become worthless after a few hours (time-sensitive).
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Exploit submission: Teams develop exploits in a Python-based framework and submit them to ZDI. ZDI runs the exploits against other teams. Successful flag capture → points to the attacking team + residuals per capture.
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Service availability multiplier: Teams must keep their services up. Historical availability creates a multiplier on detection scores.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
pictures/ |
Event photographs |
description3.txt |
Full competition description and rules |
Note: Minimal data preserved locally (~7.6 MB). No traffic dumps or VM images in the local archive.
- Competition registration was at http://www.ictf2013.info
- Pictures (linked in website)