New to Discord?
TLDR; Discord is IRC with voice channels.
People participating in training sessions, watching the conference or registering to the CTF are invited and everyone else is free to join of course.
We strongly encourage you to interact with others, but you can either simply lurk around anonymously or join the conversation. Chatroom text format is what is mostly used, but some people enjoy the voice channels interactions.
There’s mobile and Desktop apps available for download but you can just use a browser tab.
Once you join with the invitation and accept the rules and code of conduct, you can click on the channels on the left to see what’s going on. Know that any channels starting with a 🔊 icon is a voice channel that will connect your speakers and microphone, we will spend a lot of time in these channels so join us!
What are Discord roles?
If you click on the nicknames on the right hand side, you’ll see which roles individuals have. The labels you see are roles. We have a few ones to identify who’s a NorthSec staff (blue color), registered to the CTF, participating in the badge contest and so on. We even have some secret ones you can get by looking at our Twitter, asking around or digging deeper. Some roles give access to special channels, while others are purely aesthetic.
You can get roles by submitting secret strings to FLAGBOT; these flags will not give any advantage in the CTF, but could help you gain status and recognition in the community!
What’s FLAGBOT?
FLAGBOT#1534 is a bot that accepts strings in it’s direct messages to grant special roles. It is not used for the official CTF flags, but rather for fun, promotional and organizational purposes.
Check out our 📢warmup announcement channel for the release of WARMUP flags prior to the event.
Competition (CTF)
NorthSec admins are reachable on Discord which completely replaces the Slack used in 2020 and will be the primary method of instant communication for the community.
Team communications
We strongly suggest that you get in touch with your team as early as possible during the competition using the private channels that will be auto assigned to you following the CTF platform registration (Discourse forum).
The channels, text and voice, are named #teamXYZ where XYZ is the number of your team. You’ll be assigned a role of teamXYZ automatically after you link your Discord account using the forum (Discourse) interface when the CTF opens (a few days before the event).
How to get help
To get help during the CTF, simply type !help in your #teamXYZ channel. Our advanced cutting edge AI powered ticketing system will assign a NorthSec Staff to join your channel to chat with you by text or by voice. Alternatively you can use the #support channel, although its content will be publicity available to anyone.
Badge
There’s a dedicated #badge channel for hardware aficionados.
Training
A private debriefing voice channel might be available for registered attendees and trainers.
Conference
Speakers will be identified with a “speakers-20XX” role that will show in bright warm color in the chat. We encourage you to talk with them!
Privacy Statement
NorthSec takes your privacy at heart, and while Discord itself is a cloud based application and outside of our control, we are ensuring that our staff have limited access to private conversations.
There is no technical way for us to read your direct message (unless you DM us!), nor to read your other Discord servers. You can turn off DMs on the NorthSec Server by clicking the server name on the top left, and choosing Privacy Settings. Note that this will block all incoming and outgoing requests with anyone that is not on your friend list or another server.
During the CTF, access to the teams private channels are limited to team members only and most NorthSec staff can’t view it unless you explicitly open a support ticket. Even when that is done, they can only see the chat buffer between the open and close of the request ticket.
When the conference and CTF will be live, a public channel might be selected to be shown on the live stream. Please be mindful when using this venue, as the code of conduct applies to all communication during the event. Recordings might be available later on.
We cannot guarantee what all attendees are doing on the server, but everyone has to accept the Discord Terms of Service and NorthSec Code of Conduct to join. Should any problems arise, please contact a NorthSec moderator staff by using a public channel such as the #support channel. You can otherwise send them notifications by mentioning them with @nsec-moderator.
Non-moderator NorthSec staff are not obliged to accept direct message requests from users, but will contact you back when you request for help. For CTF related issues, a ticketing system will ensure you quickly get an answer from our infrastructure staff or challenge designers.
The following people have full administrative access to the server, including all channels buffers, and have acknowledged their responsibilities and enabled 2FA authentication:
- Simon Carpentier
- Emile Filteau
- Stephane Graber
- Jonathan Marcil
- Jean-Francois Blain