 Hi there, I am Gary LB. Welcome to our podcast. You are listening to Northseq Storytime. You always wanted to know more about the stories behind Northseq CTF? Well, our talented scenario designer, Eric Boivin, will tell you the story of Northseq Toria. Hello, this is Eric and welcome to episode 2 about Northseq Toria, the theme of the Northseq 2021 CTF competition. This time, let's talk about magic. Northseq Toria is a medieval world where computer technology is somewhat similar to what we have today. People live in castles and wooden houses. They rely on blacksmiths for building their tools, but for some reason, there's also computers. And how? This is when magic comes in play. When designing a scenario for a fantasy universe, there's no need to explain everything. This technology is even hard for us to understand that use it every day. So, instead of trying to explain it, we simply use a word for it. It is magic. In Northseq Toria, computers do exist, and people don't really need to understand how it works. This allows us to create a CTF using modern technologies, which are relevant in today's infosec. By using a layer of mysticism, we're mimicking somewhat the power that skilled technicians have with technology. And we see it in our everyday lives. People that are skilled with computers have access to incredible power, just like magicians that wield the arcane arts. In Northseq Toria, most of the population is highly unskilled and uneducated. Even the king himself has no understanding of how these things work. For computer practitioners, calling it magic helps to put an aura of power around what they do. They sure understand it's not magic, it's just a series of code and algorithms running to do computation. Our participants do understand this, but the medieval persona they are representing understand this as well. This is something unique when running a team CTF. It's important to understand that the participants are in this setup, and why are they doing these challenges? In our case, participants are magician apprentices. In Northseq Toria, technology is not really regulated, but still the king needs to have people he and the nobility can trust to handle the kingdom's technology. And security is a key concern. At the start of the CTF, we immerse directly the participants into this by inviting them to join a series of beginner friendly challenges named the Wizard Academy. This school of magic is a series of beginner challenges, helping newcomers to the CTF. In Northseq's tradition, we don't say in advance the categories of challenges. So if an application weakness is a mescal injection, we don't actually let the participants know about it, they have to discover it. This makes the Northseq a very challenging CTF, which can be difficult for newcomers. So the magic academy is perfect for this, because this time the challenges are actually team. Whether it is for cryptography, cross-site scripting, or reverse engineering, the participants are aware of what class they are enrolling into. At the end of the magic academy, we have one of the four main characters in our story. Her name is Elmira. She's the head royal wizard, working directly for the king on all technology matters. Her practices are trained to help to defend the kingdom by finding security flaws in its systems. During the competition, she will provide various challenges to the participants. She's a very mysterious character, covered in arcane tattoos and writing in a very mystic way. She embraces the role of the magician and is interested in bringing the participant on a path to enlightenment. One of the missions that she provides is through a data science track. Elmira brings to the magician's attention that an old foreign acquaintances of her is using alchemy and is looking for an apprentice. This challenge is actually a data analysis track required to do analysis of a massive data set and to understand the pattern of a buttonet or a north sector term, converting lead into gold and thus creating alchemy. This is one of the many challenges that Elmira will be showing to the apprentices. And that's it for today's insight into North Sectoria, where today's tools are viewed as magic. And for now, time for my own magic trick. Until next time, I will disappear! Thank you so much Eric for sharing with us all that's behind the curtains of the CTF team. Stay tuned for the next episode!