Network Security, Threat Management

Facebook making its CTF platform available

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it will be making its Capture the Flag, or CTF, gaming platform available.

CTF is a cybersecurity challenge that places hacker teams in competition to solve puzzles involving securing computers and conducting and reacting to cyber attacks. 

"CTF competitions are one of the most effective ways to teach people about security," said Javier Marcos, a security engineer at Facebook. "By open sourcing the Facebook CTF platform on GitHub, we're not only allowing businesses to better engage, educate and train their employees in safe security practices, but also making security education easier and more accessible, especially for students.”

The social media site is offering two versions of the software to encourage skill-building in reverse-engineering, forensics, web application security, cryptography and binary exploitation.

The first, development mode, loads a virtual machine on users' computers in which they can alter code, customize features and search for computer bugs – and report findings.

A second version, production mode, enables users to design a CTF game on a server and invite 20 to 30 people to play for around 24 hours.

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