Just broke into the top 100 on a CTF leaderboard and it feels weird

I entered this capture the flag competition three weeks ago just to practice password cracking, but somehow I hit 97th place last night without even trying for points. The milestone was 500 flags captured total, which sounds like a lot but most were just default credentials on simulated IoT devices. Has anyone else found that CTF rankings don't really measure real-world security skills?

2 comments

2 Comments

thea7041mo ago

Rankings just measure how much time you wasted on easy flags.

mary_kelly1mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait, you're saying people put in hours of grinding just for easy flags? That seems like a lot of effort for something that barely counts. I figured those leaderboards meant someone actually tackled the tough stuff.