General Skills
Before you can specialize in any CTF category, you need a solid foundation: connecting to remote services, navigating Linux, understanding number systems, and using git. These are the skills every category takes for granted. Work through this path first if you're new to CTFs or want to fill in any gaps.
- 1
Linux and Remote Access
CTF challenges almost always involve a Linux terminal. SSH lets you connect to remote servers where challenges live. Learning the basic shell commands - ls, cat, grep, file, chmod - is the single most important prerequisite for every other category. Super SSH is the perfect starting point.
- 2
Number Systems
Binary, hexadecimal, and octal are the number systems that underpin all of computing. Knowing how to convert between them by hand, and understanding how bytes are ordered (endianness), is essential for interpreting raw data. The binhexa challenge is a rapid-fire drill across all the conversions you need.
- 3
Git and Version Control
Git stores the entire history of a repository, which means accidentally committed secrets live forever in the log. These four challenges simulate the common real-world scenario of sensitive data ending up in version control. You'll use git log, git diff, git stash, and git branch to hunt down flags.
- 4
Scripting and Automation
Sometimes the only way to solve a challenge is to automate it: sending thousands of requests, brute-forcing a PIN, or parsing gigabytes of output. Learning to write Python or bash scripts that interact with programs via pwntools or subprocess is what separates fast solvers from slow ones.