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Crackmes.one RE CTF 2026 - A Recap

We want to hear from you! Please take a moment to fill out our survey - it will be closing soon. Your input will help us make the next CTF even better. Also, we’re giving away two prizes for the best writeups!

It’s hard to believe this actually happened.

Back in the summer of 2025, I started thinking about organizing a CTF for the crackmes.one community. We have such a passionate community of reverse engineers - why not bring everyone together for a week of friendly competition? Inspired by the legendary Flare-On challenge that every reverse engineer knows and loves, we wanted to create a pure RE competition with carefully crafted binaries and creative puzzles.

Fast forward to February 2026, and here we are. The first-ever crackmes.one CTF has concluded, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

Let us RE!

The CTF ran for one week, from February 14 to February 21, 2026. We hosted the competition on CTFd during the event, and the permanent home for all CTF-related information will remain at ctf.crackmes.one.

We put together 12 challenges spanning various difficulty levels and themes - from custom VMs and shellcode analysis to JIT decryption with nanomites and DRM reversing. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned veteran, there was something for everyone.

By the end of the week:

These numbers are beyond what I expected for our first run.

Missed the event or didn’t finish all the challenges? Check out the challenges and official writeups on GitHub.

Note: We’re keeping the CTFd instance running until the end of February. Act quickly if you want to take screenshots of your progress!

Resutls

Top 10 Scoreboard

The top 5 players - quocbao21, august, hexamine, crazyman, and ddjjdd640 - walked away with licenses for Binary Ninja - the reverse engineering platform that needs no introduction.

Players ranked 6th to 10th - darbonzo, slightly, 0nid, ELJoOker, and np - received WinRAR licenses - because every reverse engineer deserves to finally register their copy.

The top 100 players are now immortalized in our Hall of Fame - a permanent recognition of their skills and dedication.

Best Writeup Prize

We’re also giving away one Binary Ninja license for the best Binary Ninja writeup, and a WinRAR license for the best non-binja writeup! If you participated in the CTF and want a shot at this prize:

  1. Join our Discord
  2. (Recommended) Publish your writeup(s) online (your blog, github pages, etc)
  3. Post your writeup(s) in the #challenges channel under the “crackmes.one ctf” category
  4. Open a ticket to indicate your want to submit your writeup(s) for consideration of the best writeup prize

Submissions close February 28, 2026 at 00:00:00 UTC (one week after the CTF ended).

Thank You

I have to give credit where it’s due.

Elvis and lumi co-organized this event with me, and honestly, they did more work than I did. From drafting the CTF plan, to pinging challenge authors to make sure they finished on time, to monitoring tickets during the competition - they made this happen. Thank you both.

To our challenge authors:

A huge thanks also to our other challenge authors: daax, Ben_Lolo, Reisen_1943, Fatmike, toasterbirb, and heapsoverflow - your challenges made this event what it was.

And of course, thank you to everyone who participated. You are the reason this community thrives.

See You Next Year

We’re already thinking about the next one.

Mark your calendars for February 2027. We’ll be back with more challenges, more competition, and hopefully even more participants.

Stay connected:

Until then, keep cracking.

— Xusheng

Don’t forget to fill out the feedback survey before it closes!