JeanaByte
From terminology, to tools, to matters of life and death, discover the cryptography lessons that JeanaByte has absorbed from CryptoKait and would now never teach cryptography without!
Category: NCL-Cryptography
NCL and WSL: Leaving the Kali VM Behind
Aaron James
Working in a virtual machine is a sub-optimal experience. What if we told you there's a way to run the Kali Linux terminal natively inside of Windows? Aaron James demonstrates how to install and compete using command-line tools on Windows Subsystem for Linux—no clunky VM required!
Summer Camp 2020 – Numerical Cryptography
Hiding in Plain Sight: Steganography Tricks and Tips
John "Mako" McGill
Who uses bitmap images anymore? Data smugglers, primarily! You're instantly suspicious that there's more to a file than meets the eye, but how can you uncover its secrets? Mako exposes the etymology, purpose, tricks, and tools of steganography and recommends additional means of practice.
Sha Jvgu Pelcgb! Crypto or Cthulhu?
John "Mako" McGill
How can we crack these cryptic ciphers? Fortunately, we don't have to supplicate before any ancient world-swallowing, madness-inducing deities. (Although, Mako does feel like losing his mind a little during the NCL games.) Instead, Mako introduces key markers and tricks for identifying encoding schemes!
PowerShell and Linux Command Line Resources We Love for the National Cyber League Games
John "Mako" McGill
Discover what's lurking beneath the surface of your operating system! Back with more shark analogies, Mako discusses how we can use the built-in scripting engines in Linux and Windows—Bash and Powershell—to automate and simplify (almost) everything in the NCL, broken down by domain.
N00bSec to Cyber-Champion: Hacking the National Cyber League for Success
CryptoKait
Want to start your very own NCL team at your college or university? CryptoKait shows you how with these take-home materials from her workshop at the 2018 WiCyS conference. In case you missed it, the first part was recorded, and CryptoKait's NCL Coaching Guide is the ultimate standalone resource!
An Introduction to Cryptography
Before there was NCL... there was a little girl playing interactive Nancy Drew games, quietly practicing cryptography without even realizing it was a cyber skill.(*) Now that she's grown, and with a handle like CryptoKait, you know this is one introduction to cryptography that you shouldn't miss!
[Taisa here. Boy-howdy, taking a few minutes to read this would have saved me hours in NCL!]
Grace Hopper Celebration (#ghc17) Capture the Flag: Learning to Hack for Fun and Profit
This was the behind-the-scenes, CTF101 workshop that CryptoKait had been looking forward to all week! Her friend and fellow attendee, Lizzie Molloy, took these notes on how to approach CTF challenges, with a focus on cryptography, networks, web apps, and binaries, but the underlying problem-solving strategies are universal.
My National Cyber League (NCL) Prep-Guide
CryptoKait's first prep guide for the NCL in 2017 remains a relevant read! A brief introduction to the Games is followed by beginner-friendly toolkit suggestions structured by domain. Plus, it's fun to go back and see what has and hasn't changed!
