Hi.
I’m Vie.
I’m an artist. I’m a surfer. I’m a security researcher. I’m a 4-time DEF CON CTF winner with the black badge to prove it. I’m a member of Maple Bacon, and MMM, and now BBB - the organizer of DEF CON CTF 34. You may have heard of me.
Over the past 6 years, I’ve started making a name for myself in the CTF community. From becoming the leader of Maple Bacon, to graduating from UBC and working at Google, to doing talks in Switzerland, to travelling the world with Hackceler8, to winning DEF CON CTF 4 times in a row. And finally, the current, most recent milestone: organizing DEF CON CTF as the co-lead of the Benevolent Bureau of Birds.
I figured, as is tradition in writing a retrospective for DEF CON, it’s sensible for me now to look back over that 6-year career and observe and comment on my evolution as a CTF player and on the CTF scene.
To start from the beginning. My mentor is Robert Xiao, member of PPP, when he first became an assistant professor at UBC while I was still a student. Someone with a reputation like nneonneo’s helping me learn the ropes of CTF-ing certainly boosted my humble beginning; but I didn’t make it easy for Robert – My first few months as a CTF player I remember very fondly being kinda bad at it.
In a sense, I struggled a lot in my first year, but it was a good struggle, because I was having fun. I had a lot of new things to learn, new frontiers to explore, that the challenge felt like a welcome adventure instead of a painfully boring assignment. Things felt pretty dynamic, and the more I failed at challenges, the more I wanted to learn.
That’s the ethos I carried with me into now. I solved challenges at Dragon CTF, Google CTF, HITCON, then eventually took a stab at the other side and started organizing CTFs too: Maple CTF, then Google CTF, now DEF CON CTF.
I’m sure you know all this. I make it clear in my blog my journey from UBC student to whatever I am now. I’m not really reflecting on that journey, instead, I’m reflecting on the people I met along the way.
CTFs are changing because of the rise of LLM-usage rendering the hobby we love into a “type the prompt” prose challenge. The fear and the panic can be palpable both online and in-person, and I certainly feel some of that too. But maybe I don’t? As far as I’m concerned I don’t really see the point of LLMs aside from just staring at your screen like the gamblers do in front of slot machines, and then going on twitter to complain that you’re doing it.
I don’t have much more of an opinion other than “I disagree, CTFs are still here if you’re willing to make something of it”. But maybe this is a privileged take? Many CTF players are incentivized to use LLMs to try to stay on top, especially for highly competitive CTFs like HITCON or DEF CON CTF. It almost feels like a footgun if you don’t use LLMs due to how fast they are at solving challenges.
I don’t really play in CTFs competitively anymore; I have nothing I feel I need to prove with my competitive performance at this point. 6 years in the game and 4 years involved DEF CON CTF victories, me and MMM are the only ones who can say “I’ve won DEF CON CTF the most amount of times”, not to mention GoogleCTF and HITCON victories packed in the mix. I graduated and immediately set in motion leadership of GoogleCTF. I’ve done talks and became committee members of big conferences. I think I’m set. I like solving challenges on my own, so, why would I tell something else to do it? Maybe I don’t feel the urgency to use LLMs as much as others do. But I digress.
The conversation forced me to assess what I actually want out of the CTF community, why I stay, why I’m still here. It always goes back to the people.
If it was me and anyone else, I would not have been on board to organize DEF CON CTF. The Benevolent Bureau of Birds is my entire reason for being here, and they’re the entire reason I am the Vie I am today. My wonderful boyfriend and I are fellow organizers for BBB. I co-lead with my mentor. My cherished friends are also my co-authors on the CTF challenges.
Don’t worry, I do have a life outside of this. I’m still an artist and I revitalized my surfing career, not all of my friends are the CTF scene. My entire life doesn’t revolve around CTFs (and yours shouldn’t either, just saying). But I digress, again.
Before we were BBB, we were MMM. And before we became MMM, I was Maple Bacon. I will always be a Maple Baconer for life, and I will remain a Maple Mallard Magistrate for life, and I am sure that even when our tenure as organizers are over, I will proudly wear that title as a Benevolent Bird well into my later years. One day, my kids will fall asleep to the stories I am experiencing today with my BBB friends. I legitimately cannot think of a better team to spend my CTF adventures with. This isn’t about winning DEF CON CTF many times, this isn’t about proving time and time again that our team synergy gives us high returns in competitions, and this certainly isn’t about anything more than a code of honour we have always held ourselves to: we treat this shit like an art. We respect what this game has given us, and nowhere do I see this more than in the quiet moments of people relating to each other through their actions.
It’s Zardus saying “Hellooooo Hackers!” and buying us coffee. It’s Adam Doupe offering me energy drinks during the contest.
It’s itzn buying us bagels, offering her advice and her wisdom. It’s Thomas Windmill giving us a prayer candle (lol) and giving us all sorts of good tips and tricks. It’s fish offering guidance based on his experience, answering any and every question I could have had. It’s Vito sharing his passion of photography with me, and helping me with design logistics.
It’s Mhackeroni complimenting my artistic skills upon seeing their banner. It’s Strellic retelling the story of how we’re technically family friends. It’s Thomas Shadwell hand-delivering energy drinks to me, cause he knew I needed it. It’s friends from Shellphish offering us encouragement every step of the way.
It’s seeing old friends in ABCD, fellow MMM-ers, and fraternizing with them. It’s p0lr giving and offering his unwavering help during the conference. It’s Andy Piazza and the other goons making things happen, like magic, for us.
Its CaptainGeech from OSUSEC fraternizing over our respective CTF stories and getting to meet irl at DEF CON. It’s SamNinja saying hi and wishing me good luck during the CTF.
It’s k4lizen telling me good job for a good qualifier. It’s ZetaTwo giving me advice and guidance, and also opportunities to disconnect while we just talk about life. It’s Eduardo Vela Nava and Kristoffer Janke, being dear friends, and helping us out with Google Cloud during quals.
It’s Orange Fan Club giving us Orange stickers, and an Orange scarf. It’s BrownieInMotion telling me that my challenges from the past were fun. It’s Pilvar saying that he enjoys solving the challenges I make. It’s people from different walks of life, different CTF teams, emailing me or approaching me and telling me that they enjoyed my talks/challenges/blog and saying how it motivated them.
I’m not going to purport that we BBB have single-handedly “saved” CTFs from the LLM-induced boring-ification phenomena. I only hope that we offered as much as we could for the community to treasure, value and come together for. I only hope that we do that for every year I am a DEF CON organizer. That’s my goal, and that’s always been my goal for the CTF community.
It’s this. This is my goal.
When the 4 years are over, and we BBB will look back on this moment as we celebrate, I’m probably going to forget about all the struggle and hardship but remember all the friends that I made. I’m going to remember my time spent enduring with the best people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I’m going to remember the love of the game. We artists are sentimental, you see; I am a mosaic of everything I have ever loved and appreciated and treasured and valued. I am Vie as much as I am the part of me that learned from Robert Xiao, as much as I am the part of me that is twins with Carolina, as much as I am the part of me that loves to teach new things like Zardus, etc etc etc. I am Vie, and I made a community that I’m proud to stand beside. The days will go by into weeks, and the weeks will converge into months, and the months will melt into years, and I will still be Vie, evolving with every new friend made, reflecting bits and pieces of the people I stand beside. I hope that, whomever you are, wherever we meet, I get to share with you at least one of the 3 great loves of my life: art, surfing, and CTFs.
Here’s to 3 more years. For now, I have days ahead of me that I’m excited to get to, like surfing in new places and artworks to go see. I hope you all had fun; I hope you all found your community here, cause I found mine.
dont worry. The full BBB retrospective is coming soon.