Environment setup

For solving CTF challenges in general, there's a few things that you'll need. Specific instructions for how to install these tools are in their respective OS pages

A Linux shell

While not a strict requirement technically, a linux shell will almost inevetiably become a requirement as you do more CTF challenges. Installing tools, running binaries, debugging, these are all much easier to do with a fully fledged linux shell vs using a shell emulator or something like powershell

The good part is that installing a proper linux environment is now quite easy

  • MacOS comes with one pre-installed
  • Windows now supports Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) v2, which is easy to install and gives you everything you need

Basic tools

A basic suite of tools you'll want are

  • python, the programming language of choice for most CTFers. Comes preinstalled on all linux shells
    • You'll want some additional libraries though, namely pycryptodome which implements all the cryptographic algorithms you'll need, and pwntools which makes connecting to servers programatically easy
  • netcat, a tool for connecting to ports on servers, which is what you'll need to do to connect to challenge instances
  • curl, a tool for making http/https requests, useful for challenges that are on websites

Docker

Docker is a tool that lets you package up a "mini vm" of sorts as a list of instructions. This lets challenge authors give you a Dockerfile and let you rebuild the challenge server for your own local testing, which you'll definitely want to be able to do