About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

🎉 Welcome to My CTF Writeups!

Hey there, Thanks for visiting my website 👋

I’m Afiq — Muhammad Afiq Danial bin Mohd Bacho, online as Rizzykun. Computer Science at IIUM, CTF challenge creator, based in Greater Kuala Lumpur.

I’ve finally decided to start documenting my CTF (Capture The Flag) journey! 🚩 I’m still a beginner (yes, expect some failure moments 🤦), but that’s exactly why this page exists — to learn, share and laugh along the way.

💡 What to Expect Here

Writeups of CTF challenges I’ve solved 🕵️
My thought process (a.k.a. the chaos inside my head) 🤯
Lessons learned, mistakes made and “aha!” moments ✨
Homelab builds and the things I break along the way 🖥️
Resources, tips and little tricks that I pick up 📚

🚀 Why I’m Doing This

CTFs can feel overwhelming at first, but they’re also super fun and addictive. By writing everything down, I can track my progress and maybe even help another beginner who’s just starting out. 🌱

🏁 Competitions so far

Thirteen and counting, from ICECTF in April 2025 to Sunway CTF in September 2026 — including finals at NEXSEC, iGOH, IBOH and Siber Siaga. The full record, with results, certifications and talks, is on the Track Record page.

⚡ Final Words

This is just the beginning of my adventure. So grab some popcorn 🍿, join me in the rabbit hole 🐇, and let’s see how deep we can go.

👉 Stay tuned for the next writeup — and remember: Every flag is a small victory! 🏁

Find me on GitHub and LinkedIn.

Search

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Toolbox

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A running list of what I use. If a writeup on this site mentions a tool, it is probably here.

Track Record

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Everything below is something I actually took part in. Writeups for some of these live under Writeups; the longer builds are in Projects.

Dates marked * come from when I posted about it rather than the event itself, so they may be off by a few weeks.

Competitions

Date	Event	Result
Sep 2026 *	Sunway CTF 2026	6th place (5th Runner Up) · RM700
Aug 2026 *	Agentic AI-Driven CTF 2026	6th place
Jan 2026 *	Taming iCTF F8 — Grand Finale	Grand Finale qualifier
4 Dec 2025	iGOH 2025 — Finals	8th place (finals)
Dec 2025 *	NEXSEC 2025 — Intervarsity Cyber Forensic Challenge	3rd place · RM1,000
24 Nov 2025	SherpaCTF 2025	—
8 Nov 2025	IBOH 2025 — International Battle of Hackers	Stage 1: 5th place (local category) · Stage 2: 9th place (Attack & Defence, 29 Nov 2025)
Nov 2025 *	System Override CTF	3rd place in round 1; 12th of 56 teams overall
Oct 2025 *	Siber Siaga 2025 CODE COMBAT	14th place, Final Stage
30 Aug 2025	SunCTF 2025	—
Jul 2025 *	L3AK CTF 2025	Solved ‘Whitespace’ — cracked by only 132 of 1,500+ teams
12 Apr 2025	ICECTF	Top 10
11 Apr 2025	UMCS CTF 2025	~40th place

Sunway CTF 2026

Sep 2026 * · 6th place (5th Runner Up) · RM700

Team CTF and a return to competitive play after a stretch focused on CPTS prep. Sixth of the field with PERISAI Beta.

Agentic AI-Driven CTF 2026

Aug 2026 * · 6th place

Entered mid-CPTS-prep to test whether a learned pentest methodology transfers to unfamiliar, AI-themed challenges. Takeaway: AI accelerates idea generation and analysis but its output still needs validating, and returning to a structured methodology beats blind tool-switching when stuck.

Taming iCTF F8 — Grand Finale

Jan 2026 * · Grand Finale qualifier

Short, high-pressure final round under four hours. Exposed Active Directory as the next area to build depth in.

iGOH 2025 — Finals

4 Dec 2025 · 8th place (finals)

One challenge short of solving everything in the prelims.

NEXSEC 2025 — Intervarsity Cyber Forensic Challenge

Dec 2025 * · 3rd place · RM1,000

Qualified through a jeopardy-format round into a finals round built like real incident response: raw artifacts, full analysis, and a written incident report, with only one hour on day two to answer from prior analysis. Handled the forensics category for the team; prepared with HTB Sherlock challenges and weekly write-ups.

SherpaCTF 2025

24 Nov 2025

Individual offline event, joined primarily for networking rather than placing.

IBOH 2025 — International Battle of Hackers

8 Nov 2025 · Stage 1: 5th place (local category) · Stage 2: 9th place (Attack & Defence, 29 Nov 2025)

Stage 1 was a jeopardy round that qualified the team for Stage 2, a first-time Attack & Defence format where the opening hours go to patching your own machine before other teams exploit it.

System Override CTF

Nov 2025 * · 3rd place in round 1; 12th of 56 teams overall

On-site event with roughly 200 participants.

Siber Siaga 2025 CODE COMBAT

Oct 2025 * · 14th place, Final Stage

First time the team reached a CTF final. One challenge away from the top-5 podium.

SunCTF 2025

30 Aug 2025

Team CTF focused on collaboration and problem-solving under time pressure.

L3AK CTF 2025

Jul 2025 * · Solved ‘Whitespace’ — cracked by only 132 of 1,500+ teams

48-hour online competition joined during semester break.

ICECTF

12 Apr 2025 · Top 10

Placed top 10 as a two-person team, against a field where most top-10 teams had three members.

UMCS CTF 2025

11 Apr 2025 · ~40th place

Solved two challenges; just outside the top-25 cutoff for the final round.

Certifications and training

HTB CPTS — Certified Penetration Testing Specialist (in progress) — Jul 2026 *. Approximately 45% through the track as of July 2026
CCNA: Enterprise Networking, Security, and Automation — Feb 2026 *
HTB Academy modules — Jul 2025 *. Linux Fundamentals and others — directory navigation through container creation

Talks and community

CTF Challenge Creator

*2026 **

Author of challenges for Liga CTF 2026 and other events. Writing challenges forces both the attacker’s and the defender’s perspective on the same problem.

Speaker — Hack The Box Meetup

*2026 **

First speaking slot; shared knowledge with the local HTB community.

Cyber Skills Level Up (CSLU)

*Aug 2025 **

Two-day program. Day 1 blue team: memory analysis and malware analysis. Day 2 red team: mobile pentest and XSS / web exploitation.

Introduction to Capture The Flag

17 May 2025

Cybersecurity fundamentals, the Hack The Box platform, and a hands-on Web CTF workshop.

HTB Meetup #5 — printf(" Hello, Pwn World ! “)

*May 2025 **

Binary exploitation and buffer overflow fundamentals.

Writing

Short pieces I put on LinkedIn rather than here:

AI is an accelerator, not a replacement for reasoning (Aug 2026 *) — Reflection from the UCSI Agentic AI CTF on validating AI output and falling back on methodology when stuck.
Bad documentation, not difficulty, is what slows you down (Jul 2026 *) — On restructuring security notes: separating concepts from commands, linking notes instead of nesting folders, and writing for your future self.
You can’t be good at only red team or only blue team (Dec 2025 *) — From NEXSEC 2025: why the two skill sets reinforce each other, and why report writing matters as much as technical skill.

Teammates across most of these: Mohammad Danish Hakim bin Mohd Nasir, Muhammad Muhaimin Ridzuan and Syamil Yusof.

Pages on Rizzykun

About

🎉 Welcome to My CTF Writeups!

💡 What to Expect Here

🚀 Why I’m Doing This

🏁 Competitions so far

⚡ Final Words

Search

Toolbox

Track Record

Competitions

Sunway CTF 2026

Agentic AI-Driven CTF 2026

Taming iCTF F8 — Grand Finale

iGOH 2025 — Finals

NEXSEC 2025 — Intervarsity Cyber Forensic Challenge

SherpaCTF 2025

IBOH 2025 — International Battle of Hackers

System Override CTF

Siber Siaga 2025 CODE COMBAT

SunCTF 2025

L3AK CTF 2025

ICECTF

UMCS CTF 2025

Certifications and training

Talks and community

CTF Challenge Creator

Speaker — Hack The Box Meetup

Cyber Skills Level Up (CSLU)

Introduction to Capture The Flag

HTB Meetup #5 — printf(" Hello, Pwn World ! “)

Writing