My Microcorruption CTF Writeups Are The Length Of Your Master's Thesis

James Every
May 5th, 2026

Abstract

I have written in excess of 20,000 words on Microcorruption. Here is how to exploit a heap without being able to define "heap", leak memory from a secure element, do a preimage attack on a napkin, and become 1 in 10,000 at exploit dev code golf.

Background

The Microcorruption web debugger and the original 18 challenges were originally developed by Matasano in 2013. Matasano was later acquired by NCC Group, who rewrote the frontend and added 6 new challenges in 2022.

Why I did this

I wrote the exploits because I wanted respect; I wrote the writeups because otherwise nobody would understand the exploits. I published because this is something an AI could not do.

Evidence

I have done writeups for all 6 levels from NCC Group, as well as 3 from the original Matasano set.

It would be impossible for an LLM to recycle content from existing writeups by other people, because in seven cases I was the first person to write one. This is verifiable with Wayback Machine snapshots and github.io commits.

I was first to do writeups on 4 of the 6 new challenges.
I was first to do writeups on novel exploit techniques for all three of the old challenges.

I have OpenTimestamps on the exploits used in seven of the writeups. The LLMs that existed at the time could not have generated those exploits.

You can make me obsolete, but you cannot reproduce me.

In an era where university students use AI to write their theses, formal credentials increasingly mean nothing. Any accomplishment that counts is necessarily a remnant of a bygone age.

This is my remnant.