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CTF · OSIRIS Lab · 2025

CSAW CTF 2025: Challenge Author & Infrastructure

CSAW is one of the world's largest student-run cybersecurity competitions, hosting thousands of players across dozens of global regions. For the 2025 qualifiers I wore two hats: challenge author and infrastructure/moderation.

  • CTF
  • Challenge Design
  • Infrastructure
  • OSIRIS Lab
  • CSAW

Approach

Authoring a challenge means owning every path to the flag — including the unintended ones. The design work is a difficulty curve, an adversarial review of your own assumptions, and playtesting by people who haven't seen the answer. It is threat modeling with a live-fire exercise at the end.

On the infrastructure side: challenge hosting, platform maintenance, and moderation at scale, while thousands of players actively probe everything — including the infrastructure itself.

Highlights

  • Authored a challenge played by thousands of competitors
  • Co-ran qualifiers infrastructure with OSIRIS Lab
  • Moderation and incident handling during live competition
  • Also organized Hack@NYU at Microsoft NYC

Artefacts