Iscara

DEFCON33 was really fun. It was my first one, and you know what they say about firsts. I definitely had some preconceptions about the event, that it was going to be some cyberpunky, neon-drenched event with giant flying robotic dragons everywhere and cool technical demonstrations around every corner. Only that last one was true. I’ll share my thoughts on the event and my overall experience there (it was my first time in the States too), making this more of a vibes-based blog post rather than...

Making challenges for beginners is a lot, lot tougher than making challenges for seasoned CTF players. The yoke of sparking fresh interest in cybersecurity always feels heavy on my shoulders, and there’s just so much to consider. Every time I try, there’s always something new I know I could improve on. This post is a reflection on my personal refinement of the process, and my definition of a good introductory CTF challenge. It’ll be framed by the challenges I’ve made in the past, my...

I participated under youtiaos again, going from 3rd place JC in 2024 to 3rd place Uni in 2025. Ended up not even mattering all that much because we would’ve won the same amount of money in Pre-U anyway. Shoutout to my team members, I never get tired playing with them. This year’s CDDC was pretty good. It seems like DSTA has finally managed to carve out a solid niche for themselves in the local CTF space, making the competition uniquely engaging. The OT challenges are fun (albeit reused) and...

TISC is a two-week online sequential style CTF competition hosted by CSIT, where participants solve a series of 12 challenges. Over 1300 participants took on the challenges, with the top three levels of challenges having a cash prize pool of $10,000 each to be shared between participants who’ve successfully cleared the respective levels. I was given the opportunity to create the challenge at level 7, a Web3 reverse engineering/binary exploitation challenge. I’ll be sharing the writeup,...