TraceBash CTF 2026 — Story of a Solo Top 18%

Context

On June 27, 2026, TraceBash CTF launched — a 24-hour international competition bringing together over 2,200 players and 1,382 teams. I decided to participate solo, under the banner TH3 PH03N1X.

Goal: stand out, learn, and above all — have fun.

Final Result

Metric	Value
Ranking	205th / 1,382 teams
Top	18% worldwide
Points	1,200
Challenges solved	12
Categories	OSINT, Crypto, Forensics, Misc

Solo Strategy

When you’re alone facing a 24h format, time is the rarest resource. Here are the principles I followed:

1. Quick challenge triage

I spend the first 10 minutes scanning all the descriptions and classifying them into three piles:

• 🟢 Quick wins — what I know how to solve immediately
• 🟡 Think about it — what requires 30–60 min
• 🔴 Hard — keep for the end

# My triage method
challenges | sort --by "difficulty * my_skill"

2. Rapid hypothesis validation

In OSINT and Forensics, never get locked into a single lead. I tested 2–3 hypotheses in parallel and quickly eliminated dead ends.

OSINT Category — my favorites

OSINT was my best category. A few techniques that paid off:

• Reverse image search on Yandex and Google Lens
• EXIF analysis of provided photos
• Geolocation via metadata and visual elements
• Wayback Machine for archived site versions

from PIL import Image
from PIL.ExifTags import TAGS

img = Image.open("clue.jpg")
exif = img._getexif()
for tag_id, value in exif.items():
    print(TAGS.get(tag_id, tag_id), value)

Forensics — stay methodical

The classic trap: jumping on a disk or pcap without a plan. I systematically used:

1. file to identify the type
2. strings + grep for quick clues
3. binwalk for hidden elements
4. Specific tools (volatility, wireshark) only afterwards

file image.dd
strings -n 8 image.dd | grep -iE "flag|password|ctf"
binwalk -e image.dd

What I learned

This 24h solo format taught me three things:

1. Mental endurance matters as much as technique. From the 18th hour onwards, fatigue causes silly mistakes.
2. Time management > raw knowledge. A good organized average player beats an excellent disorganized player.
3. CTFs forge transferable skills. OSINT and Forensics apply directly to real-world auditing and incident response.

Conclusion

Top 18% solo, I’ll take it. Next goal: build a team and aim for the top 5%. If you want to build a CTF collective — contact me, the door is open. 🔥

“TH3 PH03N1X doesn’t burn — it regenerates.”