First Flag CTFon Cyberlearner
Six challenges. Six hours. Individual only. Free to enter.
Prizes and certificates
The top three win gift cards, paid out within a week of the scoreboard closing.
Everyone who submits at least one correct flag gets a Certificate of Participation. The top three get a placement certificate instead, signed the same way as every Cyberlearner certificate: once with Ed25519 and once with ML-DSA-65, the post-quantum signature standard NIST published as FIPS 204. Anyone can check a certificate at cyberlearner.org/verify.
Example certificate. Name, certificate number, and placement shown are for illustration.
The six challenges
Categories: web exploitation, reverse engineering, cryptography, forensics, binary exploitation, and one mystery category.
Rules
- Format
- Individual only. There is no team option.
- Accounts
- One account per person. Sharing an account, sharing flags, or submitting on someone else's behalf gets both accounts disqualified.
- Scoring
- Points are set per challenge by difficulty. Ties are broken by submission time: whoever reached their final score first ranks higher.
- AI tools
- AI tools are not encouraged for this event. Solve the challenges with your own research and tooling.
- Attacking the platform
- Only attack the challenges. Attacking the scoreboard, the hosting platform, or other players' sessions is out of scope and will get you banned.
- Flag sharing
- Do not share flags, solutions, or writeups with other players before the event ends.
- Prize payout
- The top three send a short writeup of their solve for each flag before gift cards are sent.
FAQ
- Do I need CTF experience?
- No. Two of the six challenges are built for beginners.
- What do I need?
- A laptop and a browser. Bring your usual CTF toolkit.
- Can I log in and out during the event?
- Yes. The event runs for six hours and you can come and go within that window.
- Are the event challenges the same as the practice labs?
- They're similar. The practice labs cover the same skills you'll need on the day.
- How is the final ranking decided?
- Whoever has the most points when the clock stops wins. If two people are tied, whoever got there first takes the higher spot.
- Where do I ask questions during the event?
- In our Discord. We'll share the invite with everyone registered before the event starts.
Practice before the CTF
These practice labs cover the same skills and are free on Cyberlearner today.