Comment by SadWebDeveloper

8 days ago

Kinda FUD article... the reality is that common problems are going to be easy because the solution is probably inside the training dataset, the challenge should be adapted to make LLM's useless for example once at Defcon CTF the problems were for an unknown CPU architecture based on octal that required to write even your own disassembler... this are the kind of things that will probably be hard for frontier LLM's

Speaking from experience, the LLM agents adapt fairly well to these contexts too. It's not at all FUD, you're at a significant disadvantage if you don't compete with AI now. I went to a CTF recently against teams I have won against every year, and within 10 minutes of the event starting they had solved every challenge. They have an agent loop and it solves everything immediately, so they won. Anyone attempting to solve the challenges on their own has no chance, even if you think "maybe this is too out of the box for LLMs". Furthermore, the DEFCON CTF you're referring to has quals, and if you don't qualify you don't get those challenges in the finals. Quals has mainly binary exploitation challenges which Opus (and others) solve as long as you hold the gas pedal down on your API bill. I don't believe it's hyperbole to say CTF is dead, as a competitor.