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A comprehensive reference wiki for Jeopardy-style Capture The Flag competitions covering pwn, reversing, crypto, web, cloud, OSINT, steganography, and forensics.
Athena Wiki
A reference for Jeopardy-style Capture The Flag competitions.
Categories
Browse by discipline. Each section links to focused guides with examples and checklists.
Getting Started
8 pages · Beginner
CTF basics, environment setup, flags, platforms, and team play.
Tools
10 pages · Beginner–Intermediate
Essential toolkit, debuggers, reversing, web proxies, and forensics utilities.
Binary Exploitation (Pwn)
14 pages · Beginner–Expert
Stack overflow, ROP, heap, format strings, kernel, and protections.
Cryptography
23 pages · Beginner–Advanced
Classical ciphers, RSA/ECC, symmetric modes, hashing, and attacks.
Web Exploitation
29 pages · Beginner–Advanced
SQLi, XSS, SSRF, SSTI, auth bugs, deserialization, and recon.
Reverse Engineering
15 pages · Beginner–Intermediate
Static and dynamic analysis, decompilers, formats, and anti-debugging.
OSINT
7 pages · Beginner–Intermediate
Dorking, metadata, usernames, domains, and social discovery.
Steganography
10 pages · Beginner–Intermediate
Image, audio, text, and file hiding techniques.
Forensics
9 pages · Beginner–Intermediate
Disk, memory, PCAP, logs, and carving.
Cloud Security
7 pages · Beginner–Advanced
AWS, Azure, and GCP attacks, S3, IAM escalation, Kubernetes, and CI/CD secrets.
AI / LLM Security
5 pages · Beginner–Advanced
Prompt injection, indirect injection, jailbreaks, system-prompt extraction, and LLM agent exploitation.
Misc
5 pages · Intermediate–Advanced
Pyjails, blockchain, scripting, and odd challenges.
Quick Start Paths
What is a CTF?
Start with Getting Started to understand the format, categories, and scoring.
Set Up Your Environment
Follow Setting Up Your Environment to install the tools you'll need.
Essential Toolkit
Browse Tools → Essential Toolkit for a curated list of must-have utilities.
Encoding vs Encryption
Tackle Crypto → Encoding vs Encryption - the easiest category to start with.
Practice on beginner-friendly CTFs
Start solving beginner challenges from educational, beginner-focused CTFs and curated practice sets to build fundamentals.
Essential Tools Reference
One-liner setup
Install common Python, Ruby, and system tools, then add GEF for GDB. Expand any command in Tools → Essential Toolkit.
# Quick install: all CTF tools
pip3 install pwntools pycryptodome gmpy2 z3-solver
gem install zsteg one_gadget
sudo apt install ghidra gdb exiftool binwalk steghide wireshark
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://gef.blah.cat/sh)" # GDB pluginHow to Use This Wiki
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