Sorry that I have not posted in such a long time, as school has taken up a large part of my life recently. A week ago, I finished a two week long hacking competition called PicoCTF. PicoCTF is a capture the flag competition, where the goal is to solve problems to obtain “flags” worth different amounts of points. Problems range in subjects from web exploitation to cryptography to reverse engineering, and they progressively get harder. During the two weeks of the competition, I learned twice to three times as much solving problems than I did listening to lectures. Now that the competition is over, my friends and I are making write-ups. Personally, I was on a team more or less by myself, although I did find some valuable teammates halfway through the competition. During the second week, school caught up to me, and I ran out of time to solve problems. My team finished in 353rd place, but at the end of the first week, we made it all the way up to 200th. Another team of my friends managed to make 18th place, and they are the ones leading the wright-ups. Overall, I really enjoyed participating in Pico, and I plan to study beforehand and do it again next year.