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Posted by tripdout 14 hours ago

Pwn.college(pwn.college)
267 points | 43 comments
rschachte 3 hours ago|
I was doing this on the side for fun and learned a lot.

I believe the professors that helped originate this idea were a group of hacker PhD students from UC Santa Barbara that moved over to Arizona State. Adam Doupe was my professor his first year and an absolutely stellar academic and teacher.

adamdoupe 2 hours ago||
Wow thank you for the kind words!

Yep I think this list is pretty up to date on the folks involved: https://pwn.college/sensei

And you’re right very good memory! Zardus and I were first PhD students at UCSB then became professors at ASU, and at ASU kanak’s PhD dissertation was on pwn.college

tkruer 1 hour ago|||
+1 on this. The courses I took with Adam Doupe were phenomenal and have molded me into the engineer I am today. Many thanks to the team behind pwn.college and pushing us students to think outside the box!
zerotolerance 28 minutes ago||
I learned a ton through similar exercises on cyberarmy.com back in like 2002. Looks like it is still online: https://www.ca-zeb.com
xavdid 8 hours ago||
Not sure if the devs are here, but please don't justify your text! It makes the lines all have huge spaces in the middle. It's much harder to read as a result.
adamdoupe 2 hours ago||
Man I said this years ago and was overruled. Many your comment will help convince them!
Groxx 8 hours ago|||
Honestly I've just set up a user CSS sheet that forces left justify. It makes the internet more comfortable, and has practically no downsides / bad interactions, unlike many such overrides.
mnkyokyfrnd 5 hours ago||
rivers, contextual word splits, compound noun splits, awkward pauses, there is so many downsides to mindless text justification. Only editorialised and hand crafted justified text is nice. Everything else ends up forceful and ugly.
cubefox 4 hours ago||
Strange that online it fell out of favor, because text justification was the default for centuries. It's still around in most PDFs though, e.g. in research papers.
Georgelemental 3 hours ago||
When there was a person physically typesetting every line, the justification wasn't generally "mindless"
jonhohle 54 minutes ago|||
Is there a difference between the rules TeX uses and HTML renderers?
deathanatos 26 minutes ago||
AIUI, yes, most browsers use greedy line breaking by default. E.g., FF does not do Knuth style[1].

This led to the CSS `text-wrap` property, and `text-wrap: pretty`[2], but pretty is not supported in FF yet, and the value `pretty` doesn't mandate Knuth's algorithm.

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630181

[2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...

cubefox 2 hours ago|||
I suspect the print typesetting has largely been automatized for several decades.
cubefox 3 hours ago|||
The text justification would look a lot better with CSS "hyphens: auto".
behringer 5 hours ago||
Don't listen to this. Justified text is much much easier to read.
kccqzy 4 hours ago||
When done properly (i.e. in LaTeX with microtype, with good line breaking algorithm and character expansion) justified text is easier to read. The web is not that.
bitforger 11 hours ago||
reminds me of high school trying to beat hackthissite.org, OverTheWire, SmashTheStack

simpler times

adamdoupe 10 hours ago||
Used to use OverTheWire as assignments in class, it was a big inspiration for pwn.college
deaton 2 hours ago||
I was gonna say, at a glance it reminds me of Microcorruption CTF
solyin 9 hours ago||
Why so deferential about posting write-ups? I'd just have a rule that says don't post write-ups and posting a write-up will get you banned from future editions or something.
anilgulecha 8 hours ago||
Because giving a good reason is usually enough for most people to follow something. Not everything has to be a stick (which you can wield anyway).
torben-friis 7 hours ago||
Almost any kind of reason actually.

It's a science-backed result that doing so massively improves compliance, it's a trick usually taught in soft skills training (negotiation, etc).

petesergeant 7 hours ago||
"The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of “Placebic” Information in Interpersonal Interaction." https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1979-23568-001

I first read this in Robert Cialdini's "Influence: Science and Practice" which is both entertaining and interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_Practic...

saagarjha 5 hours ago||
Because in almost every other case that involves security challenges you are generally encouraged to post a writeup, and this one is different.
knightzone 9 hours ago||
We had this as a part of our reverse engineering and exploitation minor, amazing experience.
MisterMunchkin 10 hours ago||
It looks very comprehensive, and I love the fact that they will actually send you a belt if you do all the levels.
enjoytheview 5 hours ago|
It is very comprehensive, and the classes are amazing. I really miss having time to watch the 2h classes and do the challenges.

pwn.college is the most fun I've had in cybersecurity probably ever. The community in discord is also very friendly and helpful.

cantalopes 11 hours ago||
Very cool project, reminds me of days playing with owasp webgoat
ozozozd 12 hours ago||
Hugged to death.
Sn0wCoder 11 hours ago|
The site is still up try a deeper link https://pwn.college/welcome/welcome/
hollowonepl 9 hours ago|
yes, I know it for years, play with it when I have time. really cool.

this and telehack.com is nice entertainment

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