Writeup to the Decompetition capture the flag

Contents at a glance

1. Introduction
2. Preparation
3. dem challenges
4. Conclusion
5. Shout outs

Introduction

The Decompetition capture the flag (2020 ed.) calls on reverse engineers from across the planet to reverse engineer native binaries written in C, C++, Go, Rust and Swift. The goal is for the contestant to reconstruct the compiled binary into its original source code as best as they can, and the CTF lasted for twenty-four (24) hours.

Source: https://archive.is/mCFai

I signed up as the user EntropyThot and started my own “team” called the Rocking Philosophers — which basically just consisted of myself 😋

I scored 52nd place (out of 277 entrants). Assuming that my maths are correct, that puts me in the 77th percentile!

Preparation

I decided to do a little research about a week before Decompetition starts and practice so that I will hopefully get a higher rank. The CTF scores based on three criteria of the submission: how well your code passes unit tests (20% of…