My current score is 11,200 points!

I have recieved my bronze badge!

This is my bronze badge: it can be verified and it is authentic! I can put this on applications and resumes!

Bronze badge

General updates and point scoring

I was busy yesterday, so I didn’t score any points, but today I have gone from 6,500 points to over 10,000! I thought that all of the challenges were worth the same amount of points, but just like picoCTF, as the difficulty of the challenges increases, so do the points. I estimated that if I wanted to get the Gold title, 100,000 points, it would take me 20 days, if I scored 5,000 points each day. That still stands, but it would be far too much work if each challenge was only 100 points. I’m glad that I am progressing quickly, there was a period of time where I almost thought getting gold might not be possible. But my confidence and determination to get gold is reignited!!

What I like about Cyberstart and PicoCTF

I now have progress in all of the bases, and I feel like I know have a good understanding of how Cyberstart works. I did do Girls Go Cyberstart three years ago, but it wasn’t competitive, and I made little progress. Therefore although PicoCtF 2021 was my second CTF, I view it to be my true introduction to cybersecurity.

However, I must say: PicoCTF is not easy. It is a lot of fun, but Cyberstart is a lot more beginner friendly. PicoCTF is also quite competitive, and Cyberstart seems to be more of a cybersecurity course/game than a competition.

In PicoCTF 2021, I, along with my team, had to climb a giant learning curve. There were all of these unfamiliar terms and applications we had to learn about, and we had no idea where to start. Cyberstart makes you start at the very foundation, so that everyone, no matter how little or great experience they have can have a proper beginning.

I would recommend Cyberstart as an introduction to cybersecurity for absolute beginners: you cannot program, you have never seen a terminal before, you have never inspected a website’s source code before.

I still favor the way I was introduced to cybersecurity however. The path people take when learning something should be unique and adapted to their own needs and abilities. For me, I suppose that throwing myself with no avail (only knowing programming and basic terminal usage) into PicoCTF 2021 was the best way into cybersecurity for myself. To each their own.