whoami

My hacker name is Ballademageren (“the trouble maker”).

I’m a cybersecurity enthusiast and CTF player from Denmark. Member of the CTF team Jutlandia.

I’ve been working in the IT field since 2014. In the summer 2025 I decided to put all my focus and time in hacking and offensive security.

Currently focused on HackTheBox, CTF competitions, and building setups and tools on the side to learn and expand my technological knowledge and skills.


  • HackTheBox (Active player).
  • TryHackMe (Not active at the time).
  • Primary Categories: Boot2Root & Web Exploitation.
  • Secondary Categories: Forensics & Miscellaneous.

whatis ctf

1ballademageren@DextersLab:~$ whatis
2whatis what?
3ballademageren@DextersLab:~$ whatis ctf
4ctf: nothing appropriate.
5ballademageren@DextersLab:~$

Jokes aside…

CTFs for me, are like participating in a sport competition. It’s fun competing, learn new stuff, and it’s pretty awesome when an attack chain and exploits work out as planned.

Aside from that it’s a lot of hours (sometimes days) of nerd hell, where you abandon sleep and sanity to solve puzzles that simulate real cyber attacks but somehow also involve decoding Base64, nested inside morse code, hidden in a JPEG of Shrek. A combination of logic, skills caffeine and the belief that the flag is in the next file.

CTF Categories

Reverse Engineering: Analyzing a finished software program to see how it was built.

Imagine being handed a fully assembled, complex mechanical watch with no instructions. Your job is to take it apart, gear by gear, to figure out exactly how the mechanism works so you can find a tiny secret message engraved on the absolute innermost gear.


Web Exploitation: Finding mistakes and security flaws in websites and web apps.

This is like walking around a locked bank building and checking every single door and window. You are looking to see if a guard forgot to lock the back door, or if there is a basement window that can be pried open with a credit card.


Cryptography: Breaking secret codes and solving complex math puzzles.

You receive a letter where every single letter has been scrambled using a complicated mathematical pattern. You have to crack the system or find the right “decoder ring” to read the hidden message.


Forensics: Searching for hidden clues inside computer files or digital memory dumps.

Acting like a digital detective (like CSI). You are given an old USB drive or a voice recording, and you have to comb through it to find deleted files, hidden timestamps, or invisible background data to piece together what happened.


Binary Exploitation: Forcing a computer program to do something it was never designed to do.

Imagine walking up to a vending machine and pressing the buttons in a highly specific, chaotic sequence at lightning speed until the machine’s internal computer gets confused and spits out all its money and sodas at once instead of just one drink.


Steganography: The art of hiding a secret message right inside another ordinary, innocent file.

This is like invisible ink from classic spy movies. You are handed a normal picture of a beach, but if you look at it under a specific light or count the microscopic changes in color, you discover a secret map hidden inside the shadows of the image.


Boot2Root: Gaining full control over an entire computer system from scratch.

Imagine being dropped outside a locked, multi-story office building. Your goal isn’t just to peek through a window; you must find a way into the basement (Boot), sneak past the internal security sensors, and gradually work your way up to the CEO’s top-floor office to unlock the master safe and take complete control of the entire company (Root).


Miscellaneous(Misc): A mix of logic puzzles, trivia, and coding challenges.

This is like a pub quiz question or a riddle that requires you to think completely outside the box to connect random dots and find the answer.

In short, it is not about destroying anything. It is about acting like a digital locksmith or investigator using pure problem-solving skills to crack puzzles

tools

nmap burpsuite metasploit python pwntools ghidra linux docker curl gobuster ffuf cyberchef hashcat john enum4linux evil-winrm impacket wireshark github PEASS-ng Aircrack-ng ldapsearch

ctf

  • Deadface CTF 2025: My first team CTF that blew my mind. Jutlandia landed on 73th place out of 787 teams.

certifications

course completion

contact

Find me on HackTheBox or GitHub.