What is a CTF you ask?

A CTF is a competition for individuals who are interested or work in information security. The challenges and structures of these competitions can vary quite a lot, ctftime.org has a great high level overview of CTFs, and also serves as a directory of upcoming CTFs, and teams that compete in CTFs.

Many people working in information security are unsure about the benefits of competing in CTFs, or learning their problem sets, given that they are often very different from problems that are encountered in the day-to-day lives of most security professionals. However, CTF problems are often just distilled versions of real-life problems, and participation in a CTF often allows for the participants to be exposed to a wide variety of problems quickly.

In a talk at Usenix Enigma, Tyler Nighswander summarized many of the benefits of CTFs.

What is this event?

On the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month a group of local Austin hackers meets at Indeed (who sponsors the event) Tech campus. The agendas at each meetup can vary greatly, but generally we will pick some publicly available CTF-style challenges, and attempt to work though them, while discussing problem-solving strategies along the way. The group is open to anyone, and the skill level of the group is quite diverse. Although we will be hanging around from 5-11pm you do not need to stay the entire time, or arrive right at 5. Feel free to come and go as is convenient.

We have a site (https://cybernauts.team) which contains meeting recpas, agendas, and resources to learn more about information security.

If you do plan on attending please sign up on the Eventbrite so that we have an accurate headcount for food/drinks. We are in Building A on Indeed's Tech Campus. Once you enter let the security guard up front know that you are here for the CTF and he will show you how to get in.

Hope to see you there!