The Failure of the Longjian Cup
Not long after entering school, we were encouraged by our teacher to participate in the first Longjian Cup. When I saw the exam scope described in the contest guidelines, I realized the coverage had no overlap at all with the knowledge I had studied.
What surprised me even more was that the problems turned out to be even more ridiculous than I had imagined. The contest ran from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., a total of 8 hours, and I only solved three problems, none of which had high point values.
The most bizarre part was that I finally found a high-value problem. I managed to read a memory file, obtained the system password hash using online tools, but still could not crack the original password. That last step drained me completely, and I wasted two to three hours on just this attempt, only to fail right before the final answer.
When the final results came out, yyx had 1080 points, yjp had 310 points, and I only had 280 points, which left me frustrated again. But our team's total ranking was 838 out of 3020, meaning we landed in the top 30%, which was at least a somewhat decent result.
updated on 9/25
Today I checked the write-up for the first memory problem, and I discovered that in one version of the write-up, after obtaining the hash, they immediately extracted the flag. (So it turns out my distance from those 200 points felt both so close yet so far...) Since that flag was quite long and not a normal word, it would have been basically impossible to crack it with a rainbow table. From this I concluded:
This write-up must be fake, and that team definitely had some shady deal with another team! (Wanted to punch someone.jpg)
Then I found a more legitimate write-up and realized that although I had used exactly the same tool, I somehow managed to apply every wrong method possible, perfectly circling around the correct solution.
https://www.jianshu.com/p/7c0bea9ff458
At that moment, my heart felt like this:
During the contest, using the actual mimikatz kept throwing crazy errors, I was done. Windows 10, you trash.
............
Easter Egg
Before the contest:
Publicity! Scale! Endorsements! The pinnacle of CTF in history! Amazing!
After the contest:
What a great contest! Can we have more of these, please? Many of my friends still haven't made enough money proxy-playing for others! 5 minutes before the contest ends there are 11 submissions, 5 minutes later there are 50+. Wow, wow, wow, how could this contest possibly have backdoor deals, right? It's all just the companies' own hard work!
This contest was just so well organized! I really thank you, the organizers, for promoting the fine tradition of CTF backdoor dealings and industrializing it, making it more compliant with laws and regulations. I suggest you scale it up, keep it going, and directly push the development of social, economic, and cultural progress!
Also, the problems were refreshingly new! Especially the multiple-choice ones! Profoundly designed, in full alignment with the core socialist values of our country! If you hadn't said “no more submissions after 16:00,” how many teams would have suffered the heartbreak of having all the answers but not being allowed to submit them? Truly in line with public sentiment, organizing a contest that goes straight to the hearts of the people! On behalf of the nation and the people, I thank you!
