How to CTF Infra - Beyond the challenges and flags
summary
Deployment uses ctfd on AWS with ECS + RDS + Redis and Terraform-managed infra; initial 2020 outage traces to Gunicorn default one worker throttling registrations and is fixed by increasing workers, while 2022–2023 incidents include a database connection leak risking self-DoS and a memory leak that requires periodic fleet rollouts as a workaround. Logging relies on CloudWatch; Terraform modules live on GitHub and evaluation of Terragrunt, CDK and Grafana Loki for better testing, scoping, and log ingestion is ongoing.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction and context
- 1:02Understanding CTF platforms
- 2:10The case for CTFd
- 3:222020 infrastructure deployment
- 5:36Infrastructure as code benefits
- 6:532021 evolution to containers
- 9:12Operational challenges
- 11:04Lessons learned in 2022
- 12:44Future infrastructure roadmap
- 15:24Q&A and closing remarks
related talks
39mHow to CTF Infra - Beyond the Challenges and Flags
38mCTF as a Service
14mHow Global Discovery tribe approaches Infrastructure Changes at scale
31mCommodified IaC using Terraform Cloud
44mEvolution of Infrastructure Management
44mCapture the Flag Wrap Up & Summary
30mTerraform in Depth QA and Fireside Chat
52mTest Driven Delivery of Infrastructure-As-Code