ACSAC 2025 CTF Challenges


ACSAC CTFs.

Welcome to the second-ever ACSAC Capture the Flag (CTF), celebrating the 41st year of ACSAC. This year’s narrative follows the legendary voyager Hawaiʻiloa, who is said to have discovered the Hawaiian Islands by navigating the stars. Help Hawaiʻiloa across the Pacific toward Hawaiʻi, one constellation at a time.

Start with the starter challenge (the compass).

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Challenge Title

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Click a constellation to view its challenge.

Background halulu unsolved halulu solved halulu medium hokupaa unsolved hokupaa solved hokupaa medium iwakelii unsolved iwakelii solved iwakelii medium ka-heihei-ona-keiki unsolved ka-heihei-ona-keiki solved ka-heihei-ona-keiki medium ka-lupe-o-kawelo unsolved ka-lupe-o-kawelo solved ka-lupe-o-kawelo medium ka-moi unsolved ka-moi solved ka-moi medium kaahupahau unsolved kaahupahau solved kaahupahau medium kukalaniehu unsolved kukalaniehu solved kukalaniehu medium manaiakalani unsolved manaiakalani solved manaiakalani medium compass unsolved compass solved compass medium

CTF created by:

  • Zion Leonahenahe Basque, Arizona State University, CTF Ali'i
  • Will Rosenberg, Arizona State University
  • Wil Gibbs, Arizona State University
  • Siddharth Mishra, Arizona State University
  • Pulkit Singh Singaria, Arizona State University
  • Pratham Gupta, Arizona State University
  • Nathan Wong, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  • Hulin Wang, Arizona State University
  • Ethan Morrell, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  • Caden Sounart, Arizona State University
  • Ahmad Samara, Arizona State University


Challenges

Pānānā

  • Category: sanity-check
  • Difficulty: tutorial
  • Author: mahaloz

To navigate the stars, you must first orient yourself within the world. Where are you now? Where are you going? You need a guide.

The Pānānā (compass) guides you, showing you the way to the greater stars of the universe.

This challenge is a sanity check to help you understand the CTF infrastructure. Thank you for playing participating in ACSAC CTF.

In all of the challenges the challenge items will be located in /challenge/ directory.

Practice mode gives you access to sudo so you can debug challenges using root permissions. Flag will be replaced with acsacctf{practice}.

Your goal is to submit the flag written in /flag file.

To run the challenge binary: /challenge/run.

Good Luck!

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Postmortem

  • Category: pwn
  • Difficulty: medium
  • Author: mowteam

Even stars must die, but after death, they can shine even brighter.

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Halulu

  • Category: pwn
  • Difficulty: hard
  • Author: Sammy

"You might wanna get familiar with libc source code, or not, There is always more than one way to solve a problem :)"

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Ka Hei-hei o nā Keiki

  • Category: crypto
  • Difficulty: medium
  • Author: Alchemy1729

Look up, there are shooting stars waiting to fulfill your wishes.

Run the challenge with /challenge/run.

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Iwakeli`i

  • Category: crypto
  • Difficulty: medium
  • Author: Flipout50

A new god has been created to usher cryptography into the post quantum age. Its a shame he is too arrogant to keep our data secure...

Run the challenge with /challenge/chall.py.

Note: SageMath is only installed on python 3.8 in the dojo. Run your solve script with python3.8 solve.py.

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

DoubleBlindside

  • Category: web
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Author: DeviRule

Our prestigious double-blind review system promises fairness, anonymity, and absolutely zero drama—so naturally, it’s held together with duct tape and wishful thinking. Poke around this academic circus, impress the “committee,” and maybe you’ll uncover where the flag is really filed. Necessary libraries are only installed on Python 3.8 in the dojo. Run your solve script with python3.8 solve.py

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Ka Mō'ī

  • Category: reversing
  • Difficulty: medium
  • Author: x3ero0

Running AFL++ is easy, but reading its coverage is not. Do you really understand your fuzzer?

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Ka Lupe o Kawelo

  • Category: pwn
  • Difficulty: hard
  • Author: vy

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

Note: The intended solution for this challenge has a 16-bit brute force.

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Mānaiakalani

  • Category: reversing
  • Difficulty: medium
  • Author: bp

the constellations are well aligned, this is the time you need to read that secret file before it expires the big brother gave me this program that can read any secret files on the system but the big brother has his own ways of doing things

hint :
big brother modified it before giving us, he is deceiving us. the variables in the code aren't always what they look like. word around the place is that he expects us to rely on the existing tools too much, maybe we need to think differently. take care!

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

Stargazer

  • Category: pwn
  • Difficulty: medium
  • Author: Clasm

Gaze into the night sky. Rely on what is known. May the stars guide your way.

Connect with SSH

Link your SSH key, then connect with: ssh [email protected]

30-Day Scoreboard:

This scoreboard reflects solves for challenges in this module after the module launched in this dojo.

7-Day | 30-Day | All-Time

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