jxkxl's Blog - CTF Writeups & Cybersecurity

cat-footer

"We are skids, in the CTF of life"

~ jxkxl

━━━━━━ 💻 ━━━━━━

Looking back at 2025

Graduation, New Job, ECSC, and Everything In Between

December 26, 2025

2025 has been a wild year. Looking back, I’ve accomplished a lot more than I thought I would. Figured I’d write up a quick reflection on everything that happened this year. Graduation and Academic Achievements I finally graduated from SETU Carlow with a 1:1 honours degree in...

# Post # ECSC2025 # NCSC

TheAppIsDown Writeup

Supply Chain Attack Forensics for ECSC 2025

October 7, 2025

Website went down and coins were stolen. Find the reason and where the coins went. Flag format: ECSC{} Tools Used Python Visual Studio Code Node.js package inspector Approach Initial Analysis I extracted the app.zip file and found a Node.js application with a Reac...

# CTF # Writeup # Forensics # ECSC2025 # Supply Chain

Steganowarmup Writeup

File-format Steganography Warmup for ECSC 2025

October 7, 2025

A file-format steganography warmup - enjoy! Tools Used file pngcheck strings xxd Python Approach Initial Analysis I started by checking the basic file properties: 1 2 3 4 5 $ file stegochall.png stegochall.png: PNG image data, 4096 x 4096, 8-bit/color RGB, no...

# CTF # Writeup # Steganography # ECSC2025

Squeal Writeup

Medium Binary Exploitation Chall for NUIG CompSoc CTF 2025

February 3, 2025

Our server runs a light database that allows users to enter an artist’s name to check if they are in our Billboard Top 10 table. I wonder if there’s anything else interesting in that database… Tools Used netcat Approach Initial Analysis I first connected to the service vi...

# CTF # Writeup # Pwn # Misc # NUIGCompSocCTF2025

Security Rocks Writeup

Easy Forensics Chall for TUCTF 2025

January 26, 2025

I shared a super secret message, I hope it’s secure. Tools Used Wireshark aircrack-ng CyberChef Approach Initial Analysis Opening “dump-05.cap” in WireShark revealed numerous 802.11 packets transmitted among 4 or 5 devices, but no packets contained meaningful info...

# CTF # Writeup # Forensics # TUCTF2025

Bunker Writeup

KeePass CVE's FTW

January 26, 2025

[REPORT] Mail notification received from access point. Subject: YoRHa_CLASSIFIED_12u3440029491 Origin: Bunker Query: What is the nature of this transmission? Hypothesis: A deeper analysis of the enclosed files may yield more information. Proposal: A scanner-type unit is advise...

# CTF # Writeup # Forensics # TUCTF2025

BasicBoot

My Attempt at Writing a Simple Bootloader

January 17, 2025

To learn more about low-level programming and NASM (Netwide Assembler), I created BasicBoot, a simple bootloader project. In this post, I’ll walk you through my process, the challenges I faced, and key snippets of code to show how it all works. Why Write a Bootloader? The ...

# x86 # Project

Manually Encoding Base64: An Academic Mystery

Seriously, why is this on an exam?

December 15, 2024

Let’s talk about Base64 encoding. Normally, this is the kind of thing you’d let a computer handle—you know, like literally every other human on the planet. But no, if you’re taking a college course on malware analysis (like me), you might find yourself in a Kafkaesque scenario...

# Base64 # Tutorial # College

Python HTTP Server

Building a HTTP server from scratch using Python 3.12.4

I thought it would be a great idea for my first project to dive into the process of building an HTTP server from scratch using Python 3.12. I chose python as it is the language I am most familiar with, but am planning on doing this again in other languages, both to learn new l...

# Python # Project

My First Post

Why am I even making one in the first place?

Welcome to my inaugural blog post. I decided to create this post as an opportunity to share my recent experiences and future plans with you. A Strong Start to the Year At the beginning of 2024, I landed an internship at State Street as a Cyber Defense Intern. This experience ...

# Intro # Post