The story
MEMSEC is Memphis's cybersecurity community — practitioners, researchers, students, and enthusiasts who meet monthly at the FedEx Institute of Technology. On November 6, 2026, it ran a hands-on capture-the-flag night in collaboration with TryHackMe's campus ambassador program, with every challenge hosted on the TryHackMe platform. I competed and took first place.
It's a different discipline from my Juice Shop study. There I set the pace and can sit with a single problem for days; here the clock was fixed and the categories were mixed. The work underneath was the same — form a hypothesis, test it, move on the moment it's ruled out — just with no room to linger.
The writeup is public on GitHub. It records what I did on each challenge, step by step, so the reasoning can be followed rather than just the answers.
Marks in the margin
- Took first place at the MEMSEC × TryHackMe CTF Night on November 6, 2026.
- Competed in person at the FedEx Institute of Technology in Memphis, with every challenge hosted on TryHackMe.
- Worked across OSINT, web, and a boot-to-root box that ended in Linux privilege escalation.
- Published the step-by-step methodology for the challenges as a public writeup.
Scope note: every challenge ran inside the sanctioned TryHackMe environment the organisers provided for the event.