Reason for this blog

This isn’t a technical blog or a CTF writeup—it’s a personal reflection on 2025, a year that proved to be extraordinarily significant in my journey. Sometimes the most important stories we tell aren’t about the challenges we solved, but about the challenges we overcame within ourselves.

The Dark Before Dawn: Late 2024

The final months of 2024 (October, November, December) were among the most difficult I’ve ever experienced. Despite achieving significant milestones that year—finishing Flare-On 11 in the top 77 worldwide and winning first place in National CTF Division B—I found myself trapped in a cycle of self-doubt and comparison.

I had set clear goals and accomplished them, yet when I applied for internships and other opportunities, rejection after rejection followed. The questions haunted me: “Why do persons A, B, and C have opportunities X, Y, and Z? I have what they have, sometimes even more—so why not me?”

I tormented myself with doubt, questioning whether my achievements held any real VALUE or if they were merely ILLUSIONS I’d created to feel accomplished. It’s a painful place to be—working hard, achieving results, but still feeling like you’re standing outside looking in while others move forward.

January - March 2025: Finding Ground Again

After Lunar New Year, returning to Saigon from my hometown break, something shifted. The time away gave me perspective. I began to heal from the self-torture and, more importantly, I recommitted to believing in myself and the path I’d chosen.

CTF wasn’t just a competition format—it was my source of knowledge, joy, and connection to incredibly talented people around the world. I realized that external validation, while nice, couldn’t be the foundation of my self-worth. The skills I was building, the problems I was solving, and the community I was part of—these things had intrinsic value regardless of who noticed.

I returned to competing weekly, not out of desperation to prove myself, but because I genuinely loved the craft.

March 2025: Breakthrough Moments

March became a turning point. Competing with teammates from my university in two major qualifiers, everything started to click:

PwnMe CTF Quals 2025: Our team finished in the top 6 overall and secured first place in the Student category. I managed to clear all the reverse engineering challenges, and we earned slots to compete at PwnMe CTF Finals 2025 in France.

Codegate CTF 2025 Preliminary: This competition felt even more significant. We placed in the top 8 (I solved three reverse engineering challenges) and earned our spot at Codegate CTF 2025 Finals in South Korea. Codegate is considered one of the most difficult CTF competitions globally, attracting the world’s top teams. The emotions I felt when we qualified are difficult to describe—a mixture of disbelief, pride, and pure joy.

Beyond competitions, I dedicated significant time to two reverse engineering challenges on the pwnable.vn platform. Both were Windows-based challenges, which align perfectly with my interests. These weren’t just practice problems—they were genuinely difficult and thought-provoking. Working through them became a personal achievement I’m quite proud of, not just for solving them, but for the persistence and deep focus they required.

More importantly, these challenges connected me with highly skilled professionals in the field (@kishou_yusa, @BlackFrost, @Icefrog2000). Learning from their approaches and insights into problem-solving expanded my perspective in ways that formal education rarely does. Sometimes the most valuable lessons come from observing how experts think, not just what they know.

April 2025: DEFCON CTF Qualifier 2025

April brought an experience I’ll never forget: DEF CON CTF Quals 2025, arguably the largest and most prestigious CTF competition in the world.

I competed with team `r3kapig`, and together we solved three reverse engineering challenges. One challenge in particular stands out—a problem called “nfuncs,” an auto-reverse challenge. For those familiar with the current CTF meta, auto-reverse problems are heavily focused on scripting and strategic problem-solving approaches.

Being one of the people to crack this challenge felt incredible. Not just because we got points for the team, but because it represented a level of problem-solving I’d been striving toward. Thanks @karu for helping me working on this challenge, you can read my detailed writeup here: https://clowncs.github.io/blog/2025/defcon/

May - June 2025: Preparation and New Horizons

May was primarily dedicated to research. With fewer compelling CTF competitions during this period, I used the time to deepen my knowledge and prepare for what was coming next.

The practical side of this period involved preparing visa applications for South Korea and organizing my first international travel experience to Singapore for the CDDC Brainhack CTF Finals 2025.

June 2025: CDDC Brainhack CTF Finals 2025 - Singapore

This was my first time traveling abroad for an onsite CTF, so I was really excited. I flew to Singapore on June 10th, one day before the competition, to rest and prepare properly.

I spent the day exploring Singapore since I knew I’d be exhausted after the 24-hour CTF. This was also my first time using a metro system. Singapore’s MRT network is incredibly convenient and extensive—I was genuinely impressed.

That evening, I visited the Sands Expo & Convention Centre and Marina Bay. The scale of these structures was amazing.

The competition started the next day and ran for 24 hours. I was a bit disappointed because there were only a few reverse engineering challenges, and they were relatively easy, so I couldn’t contribute much to my team. The competition had mostly hardware and pwn challenges, which wasn’t ideal for me.

Overall though, the competition and organizers were excellent. I really enjoyed participating in CDDC BrainHack 2025.

Beyond the competition, I had the chance to meet my online friends—Elma and jro from NUS Greyhats—in person for the first time. They’re incredibly talented, and we’re teammates on r3kapig.

After the CTF concluded, they and their team graciously took us to an authentic local Singaporean restaurant. The hours we spent there felt more valuable than any competition points. We shared stories about memorable CTF challenges, discussed security research, debated different problem-solving approaches, and—in true hacker fashion—traded stickers from various competitions and conferences. These moments of genuine connection within the security community reminded me why I love this field: it’s not just about the technical challenges, but the people you meet along the way.

July 2025: Codegate CTF Finals 2025 - Seoul, South Korea

About a month later, I traveled again for Codegate CTF Finals 2025. I flew to Seoul, South Korea on July 9, and once again the format was a full 24‑hour CTF, just like CDDC BrainHack CTF 💀. It was a long day ahead, but I was really excited to compete and meet people in person.

South Korea has so much amazing food to try 😋😋😋. We went straight to a local restaurant while waiting for our hotel check‑in, and it was so yummy :D. The dishes were flavorful and comforting after the flight, and it felt like the perfect way to start the trip.

After that, we walked around the area for sightseeing. Similar to Singapore, the streets were really clean and wide, with so many tall buildings. The city felt busy but organized, and the mix of modern architecture and lively streets made the area feel energetic and welcoming.

After resting a bit, I had the honor of meeting Xusheng and Kyle Martin from Binary Ninja (Vector35). I had a really interesting chat with them about CTFs, reverse engineering, and career paths, and I learned a lot from their experiences in the industry. They also gave me a lot of stickers, so I shared them with many friends.

CodeGate CTF Finals 2025 had a lot of hard challenges. I spent a lot of time on the Nuitka Python challenge but wasn’t able to solve it, which was a little frustrating. Still, I managed to solve one reverse challenge, so I was happy to contribute to the team. Even when some problems were too hard, the process itself was fun and taught me new tricks.

Overall, I had an unforgettable experience playing this CTF with my team. The competition was tough and the hours were long, but the teamwork made it enjoyable. I really enjoyed it a lot, and I left feeling motivated to improve for the next event.

After the CTF, there was also a conference where I had a chance to attend Binary Ninja’s talk. It was really cool and full of useful ideas, but I just wish they had more time to talk about the decompiler topic. Hearing directly from the team behind the tool was inspiring, and I came away with new ideas to explore.

Besides that, I finally got to meet my teammates from `r3kapig` (@rec, @BloodHound, @Lotus, @Hurrison). Before that, I had only talked with them online, so it was really nice to meet in person, chat face to face, and take a picture together. It felt like a great end to the trip.

After returning from CodeGate CTF, I was ready for more competitions. One that stands out was UIUCTF 2025. To be honest, I didn’t contribute much initially since my talented teammates solved most of the reverse engineering challenges.

However, by the end of the competition, we had one rev challenge remaining (though not a traditional rev challenge). This was our chance to secure first place in UIUCTF. After coming back from a coffee shop that evening, I spent the entire night working to get it solved.

It turned out the problem was about finding the correct processor for a firmware binary. Once we figured that out, we tried to understand how the challenge actually worked. After extensive trial and error, parsing data, and a lot of educated guessing, I finally found a proper solution.

The challenge itself wasn’t particularly difficult, but it meant everything to my team—winning UIUCTF would put us at #1 on CTFtime.

The moment of truth after spending all night guessing:

A good memory to look back on!

August 2025: ICC Qualifier

August had a lot of good CTF competitions, but I was a bit unlucky because I had personal stuff to handle at the same time 🥲🥲🥲.

One of those was the ICC Qualifier. This year, ICC 2025 is held in Tokyo, Japan. Normally I can play the qualifier for the Asian team (ACSC), but this year was special because they added an ASEAN team.

The ASEAN qualifier was honestly quite bad. About half of the challenges were forensics, and some reverse challenges could be solved with simple strings | grep. Still, I’ve wanted to join ICC for a long time, so I spent a full day playing it.

In the end, most challenges could be solved with an LLM, and only a few forensics made the difference on the scoreboard. I was lucky to solve some of them and finished in the top 2.

That only got me into the next round — the interview. After the interview, I luckily qualified for the ASEAN team in this category.

I really hope the organizers can improve the qualifier if we still have an ASEAN team next year…

September 2025: MaltaCTF Finals 2025 - Valletta, Malta

Before heading to the MaltaCTF Finals 2025, I was back in my hometown, chilling over the summer and playing a few CTFs with r3kapig. One of them was ASIS CTF Quals 2025, where I managed to solve 4 reverse challenges. One of those “challs” was a real pain, though.

That challenge ended up with only 3 solves in total, including ours. The main struggle was figuring out the sound encoding algorithm, especially since the decompiled code was pretty much a mess. At first, I was completely stuck on how to approach it.

After a while, I decided to change my strategy and focus on the constants, hoping they might lead to an open-source library—and it turned out they did!

In the end, we narrowly lost to Kalmarunionen because we missed a few pwn/crypto solves, finishing in 2nd place. But my teammates really gave it their all, so I’m totally happy with the result.

When the new semester started, I returned to Saigon from my hometown for studying the MaltaCTF Finals 😉. This was my first time traveling to Europe and also my first long-haul flight, which lasted about 16 hours.

As soon as I landed in Malta and took a taxi to the hotel, I was blown away by how beautiful the beach was.

Right after checking into the hotel and dropping off my stuff, I immediately went for a walk to soak in the scenery. I’ll never forget this place—just looking at the view was enough to completely refresh my mind.

That’s enough sightseeing for now XD. This time, I played with @Yuu, @Leo, and @Aeren as r3kabahn (a merger of r3kapig and Infobahn).

Similar to the last two onsite CTFs I played, MaltaCTF was a 24-hour CTF, but it wasn’t just Jeopardy—it also had a King of the Hill (KoTH) format. We also scored a lot of cool MaltaCTF merch at the venue!

To be honest, I felt the KoTH scoring was a bit unbalanced, as the tasks felt more like Misc challenges than actual KoTH, but it was still okay. I really enjoyed the Jeopardy part, especially the reverse challenges.

Speaking of Reverse, I got pretty lucky and scored First Blood on the hardest RE challenge (which only 3 teams solved by the end) and managed to clear the whole category. It was an awesome feeling, and I felt a bit proud of myself for pulling that off.

Besides the competition, one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Malta was to meet so many talented people like @es3n1n, @molenzwiebel, @Leeky, @LukeFZ, @cts, @pandaos6403, and many others. I’ve mentioned mostly the reverse players I’ve already known or talked to for a while.

After the CTF, the organizers hosted an after-party at a rooftop bar. It was a great chance for me to finally talk with everyone. I’ve wanted to reach out for a long time, but I’m usually too shy to start a conversation… luckily, the vibe there made it much easier!

In the last week of September, the biggest event for reverse engineers, Flare-On 12, took place. Having participated last year, I was determined to take on the challenge again.

This turned out to be one of my biggest achievements of the year. My initial goal was simply to break into the Top 50. However, after pushing myself to the absolute limit—surviving on only 2 hours of sleep per day—I managed to finish in 9th place globally with a time of 3 days, 15 hours, and 47 minutes. I felt incredibly hyped and accomplished once I crossed the finish line.

https://flare-on.com/2025.html

October 2025: SAS CTF Finals 2025 - Phuket, Thailand

I’m so grateful to @ctfguy from Infobahn for inviting me to join their team for the SAS CTF Finals. It’s been a pleasure, and I really want to thank @ctfguy, @rewhile, @Zayn, @t-chen, @ViperX7, and @careless_finch for the opportunity.

I believe this was the best CTF hosted in the ASEAN region in recent years. Kaspersky and Drovosec did a fantastic job organizing such an incredible CTF and conference; I truly enjoyed every moment of the three days I spent in Thailand for this event.

The format this time was Attack/Defense, which isn’t exactly my strongest suit. However, during the competition, I worked on the Minecraft service alongside @Zayn.

The vulnerability I found (and collaborated with @Zayn to exploit) was a crypto bug. Essentially, it allowed us to predict/generate the random tokens used for account access. After a while, @Zayn “cooked” a working exploit to retrieve these tokens quickly right after I asked him to help!!!

However, we hit a major roadblock: we couldn’t automate the exploit to access the server and fetch the flags using the tokens we found (we are one of three team that are able to exploit this service). We ended up spending most of our time manually retrieving the flags, which was quite a pain… and even after we patched our vuln, the team C4T BUT S4D was still able to exploit it!

After the CTF, I asked C4T BUT S4D how they did it, and they revealed there was another race condition bug—WOW! They also shared a JS framework for automating Minecraft bots with me, which was some really cool new knowledge to pick up.

Beyond the main competition, the event featured an afterparty and a conference, which gave me a great opportunity to finally connect with my online friends in person. The afterparty was an absolute blast—the music and the overall vibe were incredible, and the “SOLO CTF” was a hilariously chaotic highlight.

This event also marked a major milestone: I finally met @crazyman, the captain of team r3kapig. Having played with the team for over a year, it was a special moment for me—especially since I finally received my official team T-shirt! I also had the chance to reconnect with @BitFriends; the last time we saw each other was at an onsite CTF in Vietnam, so it was great to catch up.

The following day was dedicated to the conference. Most of the presentations were right up my alley, focusing heavily on malware analysis and reverse engineering. One of the standout sessions was Boris Larin’s “secret” talk, which was incredibly insightful.

Throughout the conference, I had the pleasure of meeting many talented people from teams like @SKSD, @Bunkyo Western, and @C4T BUT S4D.

Among them was @ryuk, whom I’ve admired for a long time. I had always been too shy to message him online, so meeting him in person was a real treat. I’m incredibly thankful for his blog; his detailed write-ups on complex problems have been a huge source of inspiration and have helped me broaden my technical perspective.

To wrap up the trip, the Infobahn team and I spent an extra day at the Naithonburi Resort. It was a wonderful place to unwind and recharge after the intensity of the competition. The resort offered the perfect atmosphere to “heal” and relax before heading home.

In the evening, we went swimming and played a few rounds of ping pong - which were super fun XD.

Overall, I want to say a huge thank you to Infobahn for this incredible opportunity. I truly enjoyed competing alongside everyone—it was an experience I’ll always cherish!

November 2025: International Cybersecurity Challenge Finals 2025 - Tokyo, Japan

I applied for my Japanese visa during my trip to SAS CTF and was lucky enough to receive it just three days after returning home. My journey officially kicked off in Bangkok, Thailand, where I joined the ASEAN team training camp from November 7th to 9th.

The camp was designed for the team to bond and sharpen our technical skills before the main event. Although I’m usually quite shy when meeting new people, I eventually felt comfortable enough to strike up conversations. It was great meeting so many talented players from across the ASEAN region; we spent a lot of time chatting and, of course, exchanging team stickers.

On November 10th, we flew to Tokyo for the International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC). The competition schedule was intense: the venue opened on the 11th, followed by a Jeopardy-style round on the 12th and an Attack-Defense round on the 13th.

After landing at Narita Airport and dropping our luggage at the hotel, I headed out for dinner with @oh_word, @flocto, @Gabe888, and a few members of Team USA. Knowing they are top-tier Reverse Engineering (rev) players, I felt a bit intimidated at first. However, they were incredibly friendly and funny, which quickly put me at ease. We had Yakiniku that night—it was easily one of the best meals of the trip.

After dinner, we headed to a local arcade. I tried out a Gundam game, which was surprisingly complex and fun to play. We eventually headed back to the hotel to catch some sleep and save our energy for the preparation day.

On November 11th, the venue opened in the afternoon for teams to set up their equipment and collect their merch. Around lunchtime, I ran into @JoshL—another “rev god” and the captain of @idek. I invited him to join our group for lunch, and we ended up grabbing ramen together. We had a great time discussing CTFs, our career paths, and how we first got started in the scene. Meeting him in person was a fantastic experience.

In the afternoon, I headed to the venue with Team ASEAN. The scale of the place was massive!

Outside the main hall, large LCD screens displayed each team’s logo and mascot. The mascot designs were particularly impressive—I really wish I could have brought home a figurine of one!

When we reached our table, we found our merch kits waiting for us, which included stickers, a custom hoodie, and a badge. Everything looked incredibly sharp and well-made.

Once we finished setting up our equipment, I took some time to visit other teams and meet some of the talented friends I’ve known online. While stopping by the Team USA table, I finally met @Salah in person. We had chatted previously on Discord in the Infobahn group, and he’s just as nice in real life as he is online. I also managed to catch @oh_word while I was hanging out there.

After walking around and greeting more people I hadn’t met in real life before. Friendly Maltese Citizens, they are a team full of incredibly “cracked” players, and as they were getting together for a group photo, I had the chance to jump in and take a picture with them as well. It was a great way to end the preparation day.

That evening, I went to a Tonkatsu restaurant for dinner. It was absolutely delicious—one of my favorite meals of the trip!

The next two days were incredibly intense. The first day was the Jeopardy-style round. Every challenge was difficult but clearly well-designed. After clearing some of the easier Reverse Engineering tasks with @goatmilkkk, I spent a massive amount of time on a challenge called “Labyrinth.” Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t solve it before time ran out. It was a bit frustrating, but I had to put it behind me and focus on the next day.

The second day was the Attack & Defense (A&D) round. I teamed up with @goatmilkkk again to work on “umacorn,” which was a Pwn challenge. Since Pwn isn’t my strongest suit, it felt quite a bit above my current level, so I just tried to contribute as much as I could. To stay productive while our main Pwn players were busy with other tasks, I shifted my focus to traffic analysis—capturing exploits used by other teams and repurposing them for our own use.

Here is a photo of me and @goatmilkkk during the heat of the battle:

After two days of hard work, Team ASEAN finished in 6th place at ICC. Huge props to our captain, @Lord_Idiots, for his incredible leadership and for keeping the team focused throughout the event. While it’s a respectable result, I know we have the potential to climb even higher. This experience has definitely motivated me to train harder so I can come back even stronger next year!

On November 14th, I went out for sushi at a mall with @oh_word, @flocto, @Gabe888, and @Salah. Now that the competition pressure was off, I finally had more time to chat with @Salah properly. The food was great, but the relaxed vibe and good food made the lunch even better.

The award ceremony and networking dinner took place that evening. Team Europe (EU) was absolutely dominant, winning in every single category—they are incredibly strong players. It was a common sight to see them on stage, as they took home the top prize three different times! The ceremony wrapped up with the announcement that next year’s ICC will be held in Australia, which looks like it will be another amazing event.

After the ceremony, we headed to the networking dinner. To be honest, the food wasn’t really to my taste, so when some of the Team USA guys mentioned grabbing KFC, I decided to tag along. I had a blast hanging out with them; a huge thanks to Team USA for being so welcoming, and a special shout-out to @flocto for treating me to the meal!

Since @Salah was heading back to the US the next morning, that night felt like a final farewell. I was caught completely off guard when he turned to me and said, “Thank you.”

I was a bit clueless at first and asked him why he was thanking me. He told me it was because I’m a genuinely kind person who treats everyone well. Hearing that was a deeply emotional moment for me; honestly, no one had ever said something like that to me before. It really meant a lot, so thank you, @Salah, for being such a wonderful person yourself.

It was an absolute pleasure to finally meet you in person. My only real regret is that I didn’t manage to take a group photo with @Salah, @oh_word, @flocto, and @Gabe888. I really hope our paths cross again in the future so we can fix that and capture the moment properly!

We ended up that day by again going to arcade to play game XD.

November 15th was the final day of my ICC trip. Instead of sightseeing, I spent eight hours grinding in the hotel lobby to finish a National CTF competition. Once I finally wrapped that up, I headed out to join the Friendly Maltese Citizens (FMC) for a farewell dinner.

We went for Japanese food, and I was surprised to find that almost everything—including the beef—was served raw! It was a unique experience, and the dinner was excellent overall. However, I felt a bit rushed because my flight was that same night. I had to say my goodbyes and leave earlier than everyone else, which was such a pity.

It was the perfect way to end such a high-energy week.

December 2025: BlackHat MEA CTF Finals 2025 - Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The BlackHat MEA CTF Finals was my final event of 2025, and it was a truly unforgettable experience. It was particularly special because it marked the first time I’ve ever placed on the podium at an onsite CTF!

This trip was also my second long-haul travel experience. It was a grueling 18-hour journey, including a transit in Guangzhou before flying to Riyadh. The Guangzhou airport was massive, and I have to say, the food there was delicious.

I landed in Riyadh quite late, so after reaching the hotel, I went straight to sleep. The format for this CTF was intense: a three-day Jeopardy-style competition requiring eight hours of non-stop focus each day.

I played with r3kapig alongside @crazyman, @rec, @BitsFriends, and @chleynx. On the first day, we struggled to find an XL car that could fit all five of us. We ended up having to book a standard 4-seat car, and… well, this happened:

When we reached the venue, we ran into another small snag—we arrived about two hours too early and had to wait outside just to get in. 💀

Once we finally got inside, I was blown away by the scale of the event. There were so many companies present, and the venue was the largest I have ever seen. The Capture The Flag zone, in particular, looked incredible.

On Day 1, I was lucky enough to get “First Blood” on the hardest Real Reverse challenge. I was thrilled to receive a challenge coin for it! I decided to skip the final Reversing challenge because it felt a bit “guessy” (more like a Misc challenge), so I spent my time helping my teammates solve the Forensics challenges instead.

The highlight of the day—and perhaps the whole trip—was finally meeting my friend @hexamine. We have known each other for two years through the CTF community, and he has become a very important friend to me.

Hexamine is an incredibly talented reverser, and I’ve learned so much from him over the years. After two years of being “online-only” friends, meeting him in person was a huge milestone. I was so happy and overwhelmed that when I first saw him, we shared a hug, and I actually got quite emotional! To mark the occasion, I gave him a coin from ICC as a token of our friendship. I’m so glad he liked it.

Afterward, we spent some time walking around the venue together. To be honest, we were both in shock at the scale of the place—we both kept agreeing that it was just absolutely massive! It was great to finally explore an event like this side-by-side.

We ended Day 1 in the top 3—a fantastic start!

Because our hotel was quite far from the venue, by the time we finished the CTF, grabbed a quick dinner, and got back, everyone went straight to sleep.

On the second day, I ran into issues with another “guessy” reverse challenge that required fuzzing opcodes to recover a VM structure. Feeling frustrated with it, I switched over to help my teammates with Forensics again, and we were able to clear the category.

The funny thing is that one of the Forensics challenges involved reversing a piece of ransomware. Honestly, I found that ransomware task much more enjoyable than the actual Reversing challenges on Day 2! We ended the day in 4th place, knowing we had to push even harder on the final day.

On the last day, the Reversing challenges were a bit better—at least they weren’t “guessy”—but they were fairly easy. After clearing the Reversing category, I found that my teammates had already cleared all the Forensics challenges too.

While I wanted to keep contributing, it was actually a bit of a blessing in disguise because the last pwn and crypto challenge were too hard… Since I only had a few time to see the venue with my friend @hexamine, I used the last two hours of the competition to go outside the Capture The Flag Zone and visit with my teammates @BitFriends.

After I left the CTF zone 30 minutes, the scoreboard was frozen. At that moment, we were sitting in 2nd place. I took that time to walk around and see the rest of the venue, but by the time I returned for the finish, our team hadn’t managed to solve any more challenges. We were incredibly nervous, wondering if our rank would hold or if we would slip down the standings in the final minutes.

The wait was the most stressful part. The organizers spent over an hour on giveaways and other prize segments before finally getting to the CTF results. We were sitting on the edge of our seats!

Finally, the moment of truth arrived. The MC began to announce the standings:

• 5th Place: RedBud
• 4th Place: Gupper Suesser
• 3rd Place: Odin

->…and 2nd Place: r3kapig!

We were so surprised and relieved! Our position hadn’t changed during the scoreboard freeze, which felt like a huge stroke of luck. The point difference between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place was incredibly small, making the win even more intense. A huge congratulations to *0xA—they were incredibly strong and truly deserved 1st place.

After the awards ceremony, I headed over to the BlackHat MEA banner to capture some memories with friends.

First up, a photo with the whole team:

I also managed to get a shot with @flocto and @unvariant—the “pwn god” from Team Smiley and Team US.

And finally, of course, a picture with my best friend @hexamine. After all this time, we finally have a photo together to mark our first in-person meeting!

The next day was a bit bittersweet. Since I had to host my university’s CTF, I spent the entire morning finishing up my work while my teammates went out to explore the city. 🥲 I was so jealous—I really wish I could have joined them!

After finally finishing all my work, @flocto, @hexamine, and I headed out for our planned visit to Boulevard World in the afternoon. The place was incredible—it’s massive and features sections themed after many different countries. We spent three hours exploring, though it felt a bit rushed since @flocto and I both had midnight flights to catch!

Saying goodbye is always the hardest part. :( I said my goodbyes to @hexamine and headed back to the hotel to grab my luggage. I managed to have one last meal with my teammates before saying goodbye to them as well and heading to the airport.

As luck would have it, @flocto and I had flights at the exact same time! We met up at the airport one last time and went to a restaurant to eat and talk. We spent the time reflecting on our journeys and how CTFs have truly changed our lives.

It was a wonderful way to end such an intense and rewarding trip!

So, was this the final trip of 2025? Does the blog end here? Not quite—we still have plenty of December left! But there is one last thing I want to share: my team, r3kapig, finally reached the #1 rank on CTFtime for 2025!

I am so incredibly proud to be a part of r3kapig. Through this team, I’ve met so many talented people and had the opportunity to travel all around the world.

What more can I say? 2025 has been the happiest year of my shitty life.

Reflections and Looking Forward

Looking back at where I was in December 2024—trapped in a cycle of comparison and feeling like my achievements were just “illusions”—it feels like I am looking at a completely different person.

If there is one thing 2025 has taught me, it’s that patience is just as important as skill. The opportunities I was crying for in late 2024 didn’t come because I wasn’t ready for them yet, or perhaps because there were even bigger things waiting for me in Singapore, Seoul, Valletta, Phuket, Tokyo, and Riyadh.

However, I cannot reflect on the end of 2025 without mentioning a major shift that has changed the game forever: The dominance of AI.

In these last two months, specifically during the ICC Qualifiers and several end-of-year events, it became clear that LLMs (Large Language Models) have started to “destroy” the traditional CTF experience. We’ve reached a point where AI can solve a significant number of challenges—especially in Reversing and Forensics—in a matter of seconds.

I believe we are at a crossroads. For CTFs to remain meaningful, organizers now face the massive task of creating “AI-resilient” challenges—problems that require human intuition, creative lateral thinking, and complex logic that a bot cannot yet replicate. If we don’t adapt, the soul of CTF—the pure human-versus-machine battle—might be lost.

To everyone who was part of my 2025—my teammates at r3kapig, the friends I met at every venue, and even the organizers who made these events possible—thank you. You took a year that started in darkness and turned it into the brightest year of my life.

See you in 2026. The journey continues.