I was writing an obfuscator recently, I just had the model deobfuscate and optimize the code back to original and I kept improving the obfuscator until it couldn't. The funny thing is that after all this I also ended up with a really strong deobfuscator and optimizer which is probably more capable than most commercial tools.

The solution is just to make CTFs harder, but when do CTFs become too hard? Maybe the problem is that 'hard' CTFs are fundementally too 'simple' where it's just a logic chain and an exhaustive bruteforce towards a solution since there really are limited ways to express a solution in plain sight.

Or maybe human creativity has been exhausted and we're not so limitless as we thought. Only time will tell.

I had another idea spring to mind: we could hide two flags, one that could only be found by ai agents and not humans or tools written by humans.

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koolala 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A portion could require astral projection and computers can't do that. Or maybe just a VR mini-game like the 90s always imagined.

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himata4113 2 hours ago | parent [-]

bringing CTF solutions into the real world is a really good idea! I didn't even think of this until you mentioned it.

we have very powerful simulation tools so something like "project a pattern at these angles" wouldn't really work as you could simulate that.

I guess something cool is that we can make simulating the solution very expensive, but in real world it would be free since it's analog... As long as simulations take longer than it takes for a human to find a solution it would be a pretty good way to deal with it. I am sure people smarter than me can come up with something.

Maybe I was too early to dismiss human creativity.

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dguest an hour ago | parent [-]

Maybe CTF is dead, but there are plenty of fun problems in the real world -- ask any scientist, engineer, or medical researcher.

There are a million places where a computer can interact with a non-digital system in a loop.

- Tune an FPGA, or a whole data-center, or just a physical computer.

- Make a drone fly somewhere.

- Design a selective toxin (or anti-toxin).

Or, you know, get more people to click on adds. All totally possible to automate.

	▲	koolala 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Using real-life calculators to add? Calculate the Flag. I don't think it is dead at all. It's like mixing in board game / escape room / science / engineeer/ medical research elements.