Security Writeup

Documentation standards for security research and CTF challenges.

Document Types

| Document | Purpose | When to Create | |----------|---------|----------------| | STATUS.md | Progress tracking | Start of work, update throughout | | REPORT.md | Technical writeup | After solution or significant progress |

STATUS.md

Track progress for restartability. Update after:

• Starting work on a problem
• Finding key information (offsets, addresses)
• Failed attempts (document what didn't work!)
• Completing a phase (recon → analysis → exploit → docs)
• Session end

Status Icons

• ✅ Solved
• 🔄 In Progress
• ❌ Not Started
• ⏸️ Blocked

REPORT.md

Combine technical writeup with learning explanation.

Required Sections

1. Overview - Accessible summary
2. Binary Properties - checksec output as table
3. Vulnerability - Type, location, root cause
4. Exploitation - Step-by-step approach
5. Payload - Structure and key addresses
6. Flag - The solution
7. Mitigations - How to prevent

Writing Guidelines

• Technical enough to reproduce
• Accessible enough to learn from
• Include actual addresses and offsets
• Explain the "why" not just the "what"

Multi-Problem Labs

For CTFs with multiple problems:

lab/
├── STATUS.md           # Overview of ALL problems
├── problem1/
│   ├── STATUS.md       # Detailed for this problem
│   ├── exploit.py
│   └── REPORT.md
└── problem2/
    └── ...

Root STATUS.md tracks overall progress; per-problem STATUS.md tracks details.

Templates

• templates/REPORT.md - Full technical writeup
• templates/STATUS.md - Progress tracking