Information

What is this website?

This is the place where community members of RTN can submit their own challenges and let others try it out! Anyone from the RTN community can join and participate, and submit their own challenges.

How do I participate?

Create an account by going to the register page and use the invite code that was given to you in Discord / on the forum.

In each challenge you are asked to solve a particular problem, such as decoding an image or finding a piece of hidden text in a binary or website. This end-goal is called the flag and looks like RTN{xxxxxxxxxxxxxx} (length may vary). Once you have found the flag, you can trade it for points by submitting it on the website. The first few people that solve a new challenge get extra points. The more points you get, the higher you get on the leaderboard.

Note that we are still experimenting with the scoring system. The total amount of points rewarded per challenge may change in the near future.

House rules

  • Do not share flags with other participants.
  • You are allowed to help each other, but try not to spoil too much! The main goal is to have fun and to learn something new, not to get to the top of the scoreboard.
  • Do not attempt to attack anything that is under the challenges.rtn-team.cc domain. Any interactive challenge will not be hosted on this domain, so there is no need to try to break into it.
  • Try to avoid sending too many requests to any of the interactive challenges.
  • If you find a bug surprise feature and you're not sure if it is intended or not, please send staff a private message on the forum or on Discord.

How do I submit a challenge?

You can submit your own challenge by messaging a staff member on the forum or on Discord. Make sure you are following the challenge format rules as described below:

  • All files related to the challenge should be put in a single zip file with the name of the challenge as its file name.
  • Your zip file should contain a README.txt with some information or story around the challenge.
  • Indicate in your submission the category in which the challenge should be placed (e.g. Reverse Engineering, Cryptography).
  • Indicate the number of points that you think your challenge is worth (100 points for entry-level challenges, 1000 for expert-level).
    • If you are not sure, staff will also take a look at your challenge and make an estimate as well.
    • If it happens to be the case that the amount of points is not really a representative amount (e.g. the challenge was a lot easier or a lot harder than first anticipated), we might change the amount later.
  • The flag should be in the format RTN{xxxxxxxxxxxxxx}, where the text between the two braces should only contain alphanumerical characters or an underscore (_). You can decide how many characters you will be using for the flag. You can provide a flag either as a static string, or as a regular expression.
  • As staff, we will need to verify your solution for any problems. Therefore, make sure to also send a short description of your own solution to us in a separate file. The easier it is for us to follow your solution, the faster your challenge will be approved.

When are new challenges released?

If new challenges are submitted, they will be made available on Saturdays at 17:00 UTC to give everyone a fair chance for the bonus points. New challenges will be announced on Discord as well.

Tips on making a challenge interesting

  • Avoid making challenges that require a lot of guess work or rely on lots of cryptic messages or references to media.
  • Avoid using third party obfuscators to hide the code of your challenge. A good challenge relies on your own creativity, not on the creativity of another person or company.
  • Avoid using string equality operators or similar to compare the input answer with the right answer in your challenge. These challenges are often trivial to solve with a debugger.