BAE CTF 2025

I recently had the joy of joining my third CTF from BAE Systems in collaboration with The Open University. It took place on the weekend of the 15th of February.

The whole thing started by being assigned in teams. My team had three other people in it. Unlike the previous BAE CTF's I joined, this time it seemed like all of my team mates were actually active! As a result, I believe that we ended up being around the top 10 out of nearly 50 teams (though, with the time zone differences I was unable to see the actual final score, but the last I checked, a couple of hours before the end, we were 9th place).

While BAE discouraged write-ups of the actual challenges, I can say that the CTF itself included a variety of different problems, from binary exploitation to web challenges to packet sniffing to trivia, with challenges of various difficulties and complexities, even including brewing a coffee.

My team focused on three main categories; trivia, web and packets. Trivia was a joint effort, web was done by one of the other people and I managed to complete 4 out of the 5 packet challenges, and one or two of the problem solving ones. I really learned a lot about Wireshark and packets during this CTF.

All in all, I loved taking part and tackling the challenges. I really loved the open, welcome, beginner friendly format of the whole thing. It's not some sort of overwhelming "Pwn this box" kind of thing. Just a series of puzzles to solve that required some out-of-the-box thinking. While my university studies are coming to an end, I can't help but wonder, will this be the last BAE CTF I will be able to join? Would I get another chance next year? I guess I will just have to wait and see. If not, then it's probably time for me to grow up and join some real CTF's.