PECAN+ Capture The Flag

Here’s your flag: pecan{we_underst00d_the_assignment}. 

Capture The Flags (CTFs) are cyber security themed competitions that present challenges that require a range of cyber skills and techniques to solve. Topics covered include cryptography, steganography, open source intelligence, web exploitation, reverse engineering, forensics, and more.

This was not only my first ever CTF challenge, it was also the only cyber themed competition I have ever entered. So, this was a new experience for me!

So what is PECAN+?

PECAN+ is a national Capture The Flag (CTF) style cyber security competition for Australian high school students from year 10 to 12 which is led by Edith Cowan University’s School of Science.

In the competition, students compete to solve cyber security challenges like cryptography, OSINT, reverse engineering, steganography, exploitation, etc. to uncover a digital “flag” (a string of text) like pecan{we_underst00d_the_assignment}.

The Origin of the Name

For starters, PECAN+ began in 2019 as a friendly “Perth versus Canberra” CTF competition (hence the name), established by Edith Cowan University for high school students.

Over the years, the competition has evolved to be a wider event, welcoming more schools and locations each year, which added the “+” at the end of PECAN.

Day One: Training

On the first day, we had a long training session where we got talks on the cybersecurity themes and introductions to tools we could use to capture the flags, like CyberChef, dCode for decoding ciphers, Aperi’Solve for steganography, etc. I also had pre-installed Kali Linux, which they recommended to use for the competition.

One of the talks I attended was on OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) by Steve Simpson and Lachlan Gelavis from Triskele Labs.

A Fun Fact

While eating lunch, we stumbled upon the home of Edith Dircksey Cowan near the ECU grounds. Edith Cowan, was the first woman Member of an Australian Parliament, elected to the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia as the member for West Perth from 1921-1924.

She and her husband James lived at 71 Malcolm Street with their family from 1919 for about 20 years.

I got to learn that ECU purchased the house in 1991, and it was reconstructed on this site with the help of the West Coast TAFE. It was nice to see her home right inside Edith Cowan University, which was named in honor of her.

Day Two: Competition

The day two itinerary was different, with our actual four hour competition starting from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. During this time slot, the ctf.pecanplus.org website launched the challenges to solve, and we got right to work. It was fun, exciting, and honestly a bit challenging.

No wonder the competition was for four hours, as it took us a lot of time to find a flag, and we were certainly exhausted by the end of the day. But nothing was more rewarding than the feeling we got when we captured one flag after another. In total, we got eight flags which I guess is not bad for a first try?

I wouldn’t have experienced this if not for my lovely teacher, Miss Donna Buckley who I have met a lot in school and at GPN. She made it possible for us four girls to go to Edith Cowan and compete in PECAN+.

Special thanks to the PECAN+ tutors who were there helping us nonstop, sharing their knowledge and experience with us to navigate this competition.

It was very fun and new for me, and I’m definitely looking forward to competing next year!