CTFNote

Introduction

CTFNote is a collaborative tool aiming to help CTF teams to organise their work.

Installation

Before starting, make sure to fill copy .env.example to .env and fill in the information in the .env file.

Running the Docker containers

You can build and start CTFNote with docker compose. The default configuration makes it super easy to start a new instance!

Building CTFNote requires at least 3 GB of RAM. If you want to host CTFNote on a server with less than 3 GB of RAM, you can use the pre-build images from the GitHub Container Registry.

To use the pre-build images, download docker-compose.yml (for example through cloning the repository) and run:

sudo docker compose up -d --pull always

Self-build images

You can build and start CTFNote with docker compose. The default configuration makes it super easy to start a new instance!

sudo docker compose up -d --build

Accessing the instance

The instance will spawn a web server on port 127.0.0.1:8080. The first account created will have administrative privileges.

Please use nginx to make it available over HTTPS.

Enable HTTPS with nginx

It is assumed that you want to serve CTFNote over HTTPS.

An example configuration for nginx on the host looks like this:

server {
        server_name ctfnote.my.domain;

        root /var/www/html;
        index index.html;

        location / {
                proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
                proxy_http_version 1.1;
                proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                proxy_set_header Connection $http_connection;
                proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
                add_header Pragma "no-cache";
                client_max_body_size 5M;
        }
}

Edit the .env file to instruct the pad to use TLS:

 # Secure: we're using HTTPS
-# CMD_PROTOCOL_USESSL=true
+CMD_PROTOCOL_USESSL=true

 # Domain: you need to define this if you wish to enable any options
-# CMD_DOMAIN=example.org:1337
+CMD_DOMAIN=example.org:1337

After deploying this configuration, run certbot to make it available over HTTPS. See this article for more information.

Add Discord bot support

To add support for the CTFNote discord bot, you need to change the following values in the .env file:

USE_DISCORD=true
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN=secret_token
DISCORD_SERVER_ID=server_id

You can also configure the amount of voice channels you want per CTF by changing DISCORD_VOICE_CHANNELS.

To get the DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, you need to create a discord bot and add it to your server. You can follow this guide to do so.

• Please grant the bot the following intents: Presence Intent, Server Members Intent, Message Content Intent.
• Please grant the bot the following permissions: Administrator.

When you are done, copy the token from the Build-A-Bot section and paste it in the .env file.

You can find the DISCORD_SERVER_ID in the 'Widget' section of your server settings.

Limitations

Please do not use this bot if untrusted members can create channels or categories in your server, or can edit topics of channels. This can cause privilege escalations within CTFNote.

Please also note that syncing the CTFNote state to Discord is prone to race conditions. Therefore, some actions such as importing tasks are now serialized (due to correctly handling the 50 channel limit per category of Discord). Therefore you should patiently wait before the bot is done importing before you perform certain actions, such as deleting or editing the CTF. The bot will tell you when its done by editing the private reply. You will now also see more loading animations within CTFNote to indicate syncing to Discord.

Discord also has modification timeouts when you perform certain actions such as editing the category or channel name. If you modify a task or CTF name multiple times in a row, the sync to Discord can't be performed and you should rename the CTF categories / task channel and topic manually in order to restore syncing.

Available commands

• /link [token]: link you Discord account with your CTFNote account through the CTFNote token found in your profile.
• /create: create Discord categories, channels and roles for any upcoming / active CTF.
• /archive: convert the messages in the channels of a CTF to a task to be stored permanently in CTFNote.
• /delete: remove the Discord categories, channels and roles for a CTF. You must first create an /archive before you can do this.
• /start: start working on the task linked to the Discord channel.
• /stop: stop working on the task linked to the Discord channel.
• /solve [flag]: solve the task linked to the Discord channel. Solving can only be done once and flags cannot be removed/overridden through Discord.

The /create, /archive and /delete commands are only accessible when you have Discord administrator rights (not related to the CTFNote administrator rights). /start, /stop and /solve are only accessible to users who have /linked their Discord account.

The bot will automatically create more categories when you hit the 50 Discord channel limit, so you can have an almost infinite amount of tasks per CTF. It is your own responsibility to stay below the Discord server channel limit, which is 500 at the moment of writing (categories count as channels).

Migration

If you already have an instance of CTFNote in a previous version and wish to upgrade, you should follow the guide at MIGRATION.md.

Privileges

When other players register on your CTFNote instance, they will not be able to see CTF or tasks. This is because CTFNote uses different roles to restrict CTF

You can manage other players' roles in the Users tab of the Admin panel.

Additionally, you can generate a secret that lets users create an account with a different privilege in the Registration with password menu in the Admin panel.

Guest

Guest is the default role. This role is meant to be used for guests and friends helping sporadically on CTF.

You can add a guest to a CTF by ticking their badge in the Guests tab on a specific CTF.

Friend

Friend is a role between guest and member which allows the player to automatically view old CTFs but not active and upcoming CTFs. They are also not allowed to invite any new players to a CTF. You can use this role to grant guests access to your old CTFs for them to learn from without granting access to each old CTF individually.

Member

Member is a role that represents a team member. A certain level of trust is given to these users: they can see every CTF, future, current and past. They can also invite guests to CTF.

Manager

Manager is a role that represents a team captain. They can create, import, modify and delete CTF.

They can import CTF directly from CTFtime.

Admin

Admin is a role with every privileges. They have access to the Admin panel that lets them delete accounts, change permissions, reset passwords, create one-time secrets and, most importantly, change the theme colours.

Configuration

The configuration can be changed in the .env file. This file contains environment variables for the containers.

The value of every variables are explained in this file.

Screenshots

List of the CTF

Calendar

Information of a single CTF

Task list for a CTF

Shared notepad for a task

Contributing

We have a Discord server where we discuss the development and feature of CTFNote.

A contribution guide is available here: CONTRIBUTING.md