What does Capture the Flag mean?

Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions are common in the cybersecurity community, especially among students. Participants come together virtually to complete cybersecurity challenges to earn flags to gain points. In this CTF, you will gain the cache flag by completing a short quiz on the cache page. You will then enter the cache flag into the Coordinate Retrieval page on this site to gain the coordinates to the cache. Unless otherwise stated in the flag script once you get the coordinates, the coordinates you gain from the flag input script on the quiz page (or the Coordinate Retrieval Page which you can access from the Home page) are the coordinates where the cache is hidden.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the practice of securing computer systems from unwanted access, intrusion, modification, or spying. All people who use a computer need to have a basic understanding of best practices online and what cybersecurity professionals do so that they can best protect themselves. Cybersecurity is a broad discipline, including encryption/decryption (cryptography), ethical hacking, penetration testing, system configuration, incident response, forensics, and mitigation, antivirus development, malware removal/remediation, and so much more. This series of caches will educate you about different aspects of the important field of cybersecurity.

What should I do to protect myself online?

• Create strong passwords that are 10 characters or longer and contain at least three uppercase letters, three lowercase letters, three numbers, and three special characters, such as #, $, or &. Change them every 30 to 90 days.
• Enable the firewall on your devices.
• Ensure that you see 'https' in a website URL when you are making a purchase or disclosing personally identifiable information (PII).
• Do not click on any links in your email that come from an unfamilliar source. They could be phishing.

What are the different kinds of attacks that happen?

Malware is code that damages a system, steals information, or does other bad things when it is run. Everything below is a type of malware.

• Phishing Attack: A malicious file or link is sent in an email; when it is run it damages the computer. Other types of malware in the phishing family include spear-phishing (targeting a user based on their affiliation with a group), vishing (on a phone call), and smishing (through text messaging/SMS)
• Ransomware: A hacker takes control of a computer system, encrypts and locks the data, and demands a payment, or ransom, in order to restore the system.
• Trojan Horse: A program that a user installs that has a function they want, but also has malware in its code.
• Time/Logic Bomb: Malware that lies dormant until a certain point of criteria has been reached, such as a certain day or time or a user logging into the system.
• Worm: Malware that can spread to other machines without human help.
• Zombies: Computers under the control of an attacker. If your computer is attacked by a zombie, someone else has complete control of your computer.
• Botnet: A collection of zombies that are used to bring down websites with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack or to send phishing/spam emails.
• Spyware: Malware that collects information about the users on a system.
• Keylogger: Spyware that records all of a user's keystrokes to obtain passwords and PII.

What is Cryptography and how does it relate to Cybersecurity?

Cryptography is the practice of encrypting messages or numerical codes so that they can not be read without decrypting them. Here are some common types of cryptographic codes:

• Caesar cipher: What the Geocaching website uses to encrypt hints. Messages encrypted with a Caesar cipher are shifted forward a set amount of letters. To decrypt the message, one has to shift back the amount of letters the message was encrypted. EX: 'Geocaching' with a shift of 5 would read 'Ljthfhmnl'. Please use this resource to help you.
• Binary to Decimal/Decimal to Binary: Converting to and from the Base 10 number system (decimal) to the Base 2 number system (binary). In Base 2, the only two digits used are 0 and 1, and each time a multiple of 2 is reached, a new place is added. This resource will help you convert from Decimal to Binary and vice versa.
• Hex to Decimal/Decimal to Hex: Converting to and from the Base 10 number system (decimal) to the Base 16 number system (hex). In Base 16, the digits of 0-9 and A, B, C, D, E, and F are used. Each time a multiple of 16 is reached, a new place is added. This resource will help you convert from Decimal to Hex and vice versa.
• Binary to ASCII: ASCII is a way of representing letters through the binary number system. To convert back and forth, please use this resource.

This information came from my own knowledge as well as information from CyberPatriot, the world's largest youth cybersecurity competition.

This information is in no way, shape, or form a comprehensive overview of the field of cybersecurity. As more caches are added to the series, more information will be added to this page.