Pioneer Continent

CTF (Capture The Flag) is the dominant cybersecurity competition format: solving a challenge yields a flag string in an agreed format (flag{...}, picoCTF{...}) that you submit for points. Two formats exist: Jeopardy (categorized challenges, pick freely) and Attack-Defense (each team defends its own box while attacking the others). The five staple categories are Web, Crypto, Forensics, Reverse Engineering and Pwn; CTFtime.org indexes events worldwide. Reading the flag format stated in the challenge description before hunting is rule number one.