Support Team

The success of every CTF depends on the Support Team

A support team has a somewhat difficult and confusing task during a CTF.

You will be asked for anything and everything. You will be asked to solve technical problems that players may have, such as:

• troubleshoot registrations, logins, password resets

• replacing missing or faulty ethernet cables, network switches etc

• misconfigured network adapters

• VM networking issues

• common misunderstandings of the rules

• and many more

Define a support team leader

Define a team leader among the group, usually the one that is more knowledgable. This person will be the link between support and technical teams as well as be able to solve some of the problems without having to go to the technical team (ie developers).

Most requests are at the start

Be ready for an almost overwhelming number of support requests during the first minutes. This does not necessarily mean that something is wrong, but everyone is super excited and everything is new. Even the most obvius of things can be missed under these circumstances.

Dont panic, keep calm and keep track of the requests you have received.

Allocate sides/tables/teams

If its a physical event, spread the team across the room so that they dont have to run like crazy from one side to another. We found that the support team was much faster to resolve problems when they had a specific set boundaries (ie each team was primarily responsible for 5 teams on one side of the room).

If someone was overwhelmed by requests we were sending in the team leader to help out or allocate other team members to ease their load.

Most of the times however, the support members were helping each other out but in a less confusing manner since everyone knew who was responsible for what area.

Try the process once

Even if CTF's are not your thing, familiarize with the platform that you are going to be using. Perform the registration process and claim a flag (there is almost always a sanity check challenge or machine). If there is a VPN involved use that also since you're going to be asked about it as well.

This will help you to get a better sense of the application and some of the terminology used, so when people ask for help, you'll be more confident in being able to help them.

Dont stay close to one team or player

I know it may sound silly but try to avoid staying a lot of time closer to one time over another. Some players will find a reason to complain about injustice if their ego is hurt.