LASACTF

Dear LASACTF competitors,

We regret to inform you that LASACTF will not continue. We had originally planned to resume the competition, but further investigation of the security breach revealed that the attacker had installed a program on our servers which captured plaintext passwords as users logged in. This, along with subsequent attacks on the personal accounts of the LASACTF team, left us with no reasonable choice but to cancel the competition.

Prizes will be awarded to the top 10 ranked teams as of 9:51 AM CDT, March 22nd, 2016 (the time the competition was brought down). These are:

1. Second Semester Seniors - 3640 XP
2. 1064CBread, from Dos Pueblos High School - 3240 XP
3. PHS Absol, from Poolesville High School - 2770 XP
4. CCACompsci, from Canyon Crest Academy - 2270 XP
5. Darkside, from Montgomery Blair High School - 2090 XP
6. Flaming Pandas, from Suncoast High School - 1840 XP
7. Algorithmic Armadillos, from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School - 1570 XP
8. Mr Doc Moo, from Whitney Young Magnet High School - 1520 XP
9. Paskell - 1500 XP
10. n0de, from Montgomery Blair High School - 1400 XP

We have published all problems (including some previously unreleased ones) online via our GitHub repository linked here so that you can still practice solving them. We also plan to set up a static website where users can solve our problems at their own pace.

Although the efforts of the attacker have brought an end to the CTF, we emphasize that this should in no way limit future CTF attempts. The actions by our attacker were illegal and unacceptable. We believe that CTFs should be a way to learn about vulnerabilities in computer systems, and in the process, a way to learn about how to combat them. Through his actions, the attacker only ended this attempt to share our passion for computer security with the rest of the world. It should not end your own. It definitely won’t end ours.

This is because security competitions were an integral part of what got us interested in the field of computer science. Some of us remember PicoCTF 2013 - the first high school CTF. We remember struggling to solve basic cryptography (what’s is a Caesar cipher?), learning how to use UNIX through experimentation, and experiencing the thrill of finding a flag that we previously thought was impossible to obtain. Soon after, HSCTF kicked off a wave of CTFs made by and for high schoolers. We wanted to create another competition in this spirit, with the goal of helping people learn and practice computer security.

To that end, LASACTF was a success. A total of 1207 teams from across the world participated. The schools represented ranged from small high schools without computer science programs, to previous CTF winners, to some of the most prestigious institutions in the world. These teams collectively solved 5782 problems over the course of 78 hours. This tells us our CTF far surpassed our goal of teaching many students about computer security.

And for that, we thank you all for your continued support throughout the competition. Running LASACTF was an amazing experience. We have all learned so much, and we are thankful for having been able to share that opportunity with all of you.

Sincerely,

The LASACTF Team

Ashwin Gupta
Arthur Pachachura
Ehsan Asdar
Jonathan S
Michael Barre
Neil Patil
Niels Kornerup
r3ndom
Wilson Nguyen

P.S.
We encourage you to check out the many upcoming High School CTFs. Here’s a list of some:
sCTF – April 8 - 15, 2016 – https://sctf.io/
angstromCTF – April 9 - 17, 2016 – https://angstromctf.com
PACTF – April 10 – 30, 2016 – https://pactf.com/
CryptoCTF – April 23 - 29, 2016 - http://cryptoctf.ctfd.io/
HSCTF – May 14 – 21, 2016 – http://hsctf.com/
TJCTF – May 27 – 29, 2016 – https://tjctf.org/
EasyCTF – November 2016 – http://easyctf.com/