Automation

Platform Midnight Sun CTF 2026 Quals Difficulty Hard OS Linux x86-64 Tags Templated binary RE, radare2 scripting, automated static analysis empols is the kind of challenge that punishes you for trying to solve binaries by hand. The server hands you twenty fresh, randomly-generated x86-64 ELFs in one session and demands the validating input string for each — and you almost certainly cannot reverse-engineer twenty unique binaries fast enough to fit inside the session timeout. The intended path is to recognise that the binaries are generated from a small set of templates, then write a static-analysis engine that detects the template and extracts the answer from disassembly. ...

Recon is the single highest-leverage activity in bug bounty hunting — but most beginners do it wrong. They run every tool, collect 200,000 subdomains, and then stare at the wall. This is the recon pipeline used by hunters who consistently hit the leaderboard. ...