Trace Labs Global Missing Persons CTF V

Trace Labs CTF V

TraceLabs hosted the Global Missing Persons CTF V event on July 11, 2020. My team //synergy got 64th place out of 190 teams.

Introduction

This was my first Trace Labs CTF. I captained a team. The good thing about being a captain is you can control who is on the team. My rules were:

1. Must have sock puppet accounts ready.
2. Must have a VPN.
3. Writing out this is a competitive team where we work the entire 6 hours.

I was worried about a future team member spamming submissions and disqualifying the team. I thought my requirements would eliminate people who weren't serious. The team hit 4 members Friday evening pretty quickly.

Notes

My laptop was too slow for this event. My virtual machine froze and I had to restart. Restarting means I have to login to my accounts again. I'll use my desktop next time.

The team used Slack and Trello. Our strategy was to research a person and rotate every hour. This strategy broke after 1 rotation. Some missing people had 2-4 hours of info you could sift through and submit. I worked on 4 out of the 8 people. A good idea is to post info in a trello board and append (submitted) to it so others don't submit the same info.

Oddly my Facebook has survived for one full month. When I would grap a URL and go on a new tab, sometimes I'd get a message saying "This Account has been suspended". I saw this when I tried to use FB to login to a fake Instagram. Luckily, somehow, someway, my fake Facebook lives on.

I saw an Instagram video and wanted to Google Map it. I ran out of time.

The event ended in the blink of an eye. It felt like 2 hours.

What I learned

This was my first time encountering gang-related content for a missing person.

Finding info for a person in a different (language/country) is hard! I need to find a good translator plugin for the next event.

I need to make a personal ElasticSearch database with breached email and password content. I can turn in the username and password for points.

Ending

Thanks to the TraceLabs team! The event ran smoothly and technical issues were resolved quickly. Once I break top 50, I'll apply to be a judge! See ya in August.