Competitive Team
As Maple Bacon grows more experienced, our main goal remains to succeed at CTF competitions and learn valuable security concepts along the way. Though we started out as a small team with only a handful of people, we’ve gone on to the highest levels of competition, placing top 25 in the world and winning DEFCON 30 with MMM.
Developing these skills requires dedicated practice and commitment. For that reason, we host a competitive subteam for members who are driven and looking to spend more time honing their computer security skills.
How it works
Our competitive team focuses on training and achieving high rankings in important and recognized CTFs, such as DEFCON and various qualifying competitions.
- We play in CTFs weekly or bi-weekly, with a focus on more established competitions.
- After the weekend CTF ends, we pick out a few unsolved challenges and work through them in groups over the span of the week. If we didn’t play in a live competition that week, we look at reputable CTFs from past years.
- During Tuesday meetings, we demo our solutions to these past challenges. This can be a week or two weeks after the CTF, not the Tuesday immediately following.
A typical schedule may look like:
- Mar. 24th - Mar. 25th: Friday Meeting – Line CTF
- Mar. 26th - Apr. 3rd: Upsolve Line CTF challenges and prepare demos
- Apr. 4th: Tuesday Meeting – demo Line CTF challenges
Joining the team
If you’re passionate about CTFs and willing to put in effort toward developing your skills, read on! We’re looking for people who actively play with Maple Bacon or have experience with other CTF teams in the past.
Although we don’t have a minimum “hours/week”, we expect that you:
- Dedicate time during the week for upsolving challenges with others
- Occasionally prepare educational demos for Tuesday meetings
- Actively participate in CTFs at least once every 2-3 weeks
Note: you must be verified in our Discord server as a UBC student