wolfshirtz
The NCL Player Ambassadors have been asked this question many times over the years. Wolfshirtz offers a definitive answer, but first poses this insightful counter-question: "Why mathematically garble your data to hide it when you can make it look like a dinosaur with a cool top hat?"
By 0x600DF00D
New NCL Coaches: Read for a gentle introduction.
Seasoned Coaches: Read for a new take on how to help your students succeed.
0x600DF00D breaks down how to coach, what to coach, and ways to incorporate NCL into the classroom, all while honoring the Rules of Conduct.
By Taisa
Taisa played her first season of NCL entirely from a browser-only device and shares her top resources and tricks for competing in less-than-ideal circumstances. Even if you've got Kali running as a VM, low-tech and browser-based tools can be a great way to check your work, troubleshoot your process, or collaborate with teammates in the cloud.
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!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
