This weekend I participated in the Real World CTF with WreckTheLine. Unlike many other CTFs, these challenges were all based on real applications and systems. It’s interesting being able to use (and gain) domain knowledge, and while contrived challenges are fun, exploiting a system that exists in the real world – on the real internet – is another level of engagement.

I recently participated in Samsung’s Hacker’s Playground CTF with Wreck The Line. We finished with 1592 points, in 26th place of 1075 teams. Most of my time was spent on Legonigma, an interesting 500 point challenge based on two renders of a Lego cryptography gadget.

I have several EFUN SH331W smart outlets for controlling various lights. They’re based on a whitelabel ESP8266 design by Tuya, so I usually use tuya-convert to flash them with Tasmota so I can control them with MQTT. Unfortunately tuya-convert is a rather tedious and error-prone process, and recently I managed to soft-brick one.