Facebook announced today that it will release an open source version of their online Capture the Flag, also know as CTF, gaming platform on GitHub.
CTF is a program to help train those who want to get into cyber cyber security field. Usually they are used in competitions, like the ones Facebook holds to hire new security engineers.
“Anybody will be able to run their own CTF competition—schools, universities, conferences,” said Javier Marcos, a Facebook security engineer who developed the first version of the software as a pet project in 2013. Its elements include a digital game map, registration page, and scoreboard. “We have everything required for all these different events and institutions to run their own competitions.”
There will be two versions of CTF made available on GitHub. One version will let people play a complete CTF game. The second version will be a development mode where people can boot up a virtual machine that lets them toy with code and features as well as look for bugs in the software.
This isn’t the first open source program Facebook has released. Tools such as jest (a JavaScript test) and pop (an animations library for iOS and OS X) are examples of such tools.
With reports that the cyber security industry will be short in 2020, Facebook wants to encourage people to get into the game (so to speak). They hope that with the release of their CTF program, it could be used to teach and get people interested in the field. Teachers at universities will be able to use this as a tool in their computer science courses. Just don’t go expecting to be taught how to hack the Pentagon or the Chinese Government.
Recently Facebook has gotten some bad press with a scandal involving their news feed being biased. With this news and Oculus Rift being released, they might not have to worry much.
