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2026from public repositories

WRITEUP SPECTRE 2026

22 challenges with 22 published solutions between them. CTFtime has no listing for this event at all, so nothing built on CTFtime can show what it was made of. These writeups were found in public repositories instead. Each link is pinned to the commit it was read from.

Where these writeups live

Uncategorised6

The upstream scoreboard did not say, so neither do we.

Solve it with:Cipher identifier and automatic decoderLearn: Recognising encodings

Web4

Reach data or functionality the application meant to keep from you - through its inputs, its tokens, or its trust in the client.

Solve it with:JWT decoder and signature verifierJWT alg=none bypass generatorWeb attack payload catalogJWT secret brute forceLearn: Web attacks and session tokens

Cryptography3

Recover a plaintext or a key from something that was supposed to protect it. In practice: identify the scheme, find the parameter the author got wrong, exploit it.

Solve it with:Cipher identifier and automatic decoderVigenere cipher solver with automatic key recoveryRSA decryption and attack runnerWiener’s attack on small RSA private exponentsIn-browser hash cracker with rule transformsLearn: Classical ciphers and frequency analysisLearn: RSA and the parameters that break it

Misc3

Everything that fits no other box: esolangs, puzzles, scripting exercises, and the jail escapes that have not yet earned their own category.

Solve it with:Brainfuck and esolang decoderCipher identifier and automatic decoderRegex tester with match offsets and capture groupsLearn: Recognising encodings

Forensics3

Recover something from a file, a capture, or a disk image - often from a part of it the format says is unused.

Solve it with:File type identifier by magic bytesMagic byte and file signature tablePCAP analyzer for CTF network forensicsEXIF metadata viewerLearn: File forensics and carvingLearn: Network forensics

OSINT2

Answer a question about the real world from public sources. The work is pivoting between identifiers, not exploiting anything.

Solve it with:EXIF metadata viewerQR code decoder

Binary exploitation1

Turn a memory-safety bug in a native binary into control of execution. Usually a stack overflow, a format string, or a heap primitive.

Solve it with:ROP gadget finderShellcode assembler and libraryCyclic pattern generator and offset finderFormat string exploit builderLearn: Binary exploitation

Other 2026 events