Build your CTF skills, help yourself advance your personal best score, and prepare for the big show using our mini Competitions to practice.

pico-Boo!: How to avoid scaring students away in a CTF competition (2019) Automatic Problem Generation for Capture-the-Flag Competitions (2015) picoCTF: A Game-Based Computer Security Competition for High School Students (2014)

In 2014 we ran a large-scale CTF competition called PicoCTF, where we measured the prevalence of flag sharing. Our results indicate that about 0.8% of flags submitted to AGP problems were copied, with 14% of teams submitting at least one shared flag.

Over the course of four months, a team of 13 students from PPP and Team Osiris led by David Brumley built picoCTF2. From April 26th to May 6th 2013, nearly 10,000 middle and high school students competed in picoCTF 2013. To the best of our knowledge picoCTF 2013 was the largest computer security competition ever held.

various cyber security exploits. While most CTF competitions are college-level or above, picoCTF specifically targets middle & high school students. The code for its framework is open-source and has been used to host other CTF competitions. The …

Jul 25, 2024 · As the table above shows, using a GUI involves browsing and clicking, while using a shell involves knowing a good app to use. Google has made finding the right app for a shell interface much easier than it was years ago. As always for CTF’s, Google is your friend!

Mar 14, 2025 · picoCTF is a free computer security education program with original content built on a capture-the-flag framework created by security and privacy experts at Carnegie Mellon University.

Jan 30, 2025 · picoCTF is a free computer security education program with original content built on a capture-the-flag framework created by security and privacy experts at Carnegie Mellon University.

Apr 12, 2025 · If you are trying to make a beginner-friendly CTF challenge, it’s very likely you would make a challenge for which the solution would revolve around a well known and documented CTF or hacking trick.

What is a CTF? CTFs (short for capture the flag) are a type of computer security competition. Contestants are presented with a set of challenges which test their creativity, technical (and googling) skills, and problem-solving ability.