8

As far as I can tell there has been no discussion about this on meta, at least from the quick search that I did. If there is already a prior question about this please close it. :)

Should we as a site allow questions asking about specific wargames and CTFs available? Many of them have been recommended to me by various sources as a good starting point to learn about hacking/penetration testing.

While some of the more popular sites already have websites dedicated to answering it, some of the less popular ones do not.

Should such questions be allowed here?

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
9

Reasons For:

Many of the sites are about specific penetration testing concepts and techniques. There are sites devoted to web application hacking, privilege escalation and others. Thus the core questions would be on topic here.

Some of the sites are quite popular. They can help draw traffic to Sec.SE if we provide high quality answers that explains the questions and their solutions in great detail.

This would be a good balance of black hat vs white hack content. All the technique involved would of course be applicable to a malicious user. However, at least such questions would show clearly what the intention of the asker is, which is IMO a good improvement over most of the current "black hat" questions which are vague at best.

Reasons Against:

It might attract a lot of low quality questions. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing if most of the questions can be edited and salvaged.

3
  • 3
    another slight negative is that some of these are localised in time- these would be closed as Too Localised
    – Rory Alsop Mod
    Commented Sep 9, 2012 at 7:39
  • 3
    I think the good outweighs the bad in this case -- but I believe its a matter of opinion.
    – user1187
    Commented Sep 13, 2012 at 11:52
  • 2
    As long as the questions relate to technical problems that might also be encounted outside the wargame, I'm fine with this. Otherwise it's Too Localised.
    – Polynomial
    Commented Sep 15, 2012 at 10:52
1

Short-lived CTF events already have solutions posted as soon as the event ends, so it should be fine to discuss them here if they are interesting.

But 24/7 challenge sites are another thing. The challenges are meant to be solved alone and you rank up when solving them. And these sites already have their own forums and irc channels where you can ask for hints, which are answered by people who already solved them but without spoiling the fun. Allowing to ask here for the solution would be like doing someone else's homework.

2
  • What about a situation where someone solves the problem already, but does not quite understand how/why it works?
    – user10211
    Commented Sep 18, 2012 at 2:23
  • 2
    @TerryChia these sites usually have a subforum/thread accessible once you beat the challenge where you can discuss it
    – Zzz
    Commented Sep 18, 2012 at 5:15
1

Against: Most of these sites have their forums and hence posting here would be redundant. I feel its better if people used that site's own forum managed by the creators of those sites.

You must log in to answer this question.