mynkpdrThird place in a CTF, solo, against 500+ teams
My teammate dropped out right before a CTF with 500+ teams. I played alone with OSINT skills and an AI coding agent, and finished third.
I first placed first at the WFYO OSINT Challenge, part of IIT Madras’s Paradox Fest, out of 200+ participants. Complex intelligence-gathering puzzles, and hours of deep dives I enjoyed a lot.
I couldn’t attend the offline finals. But I still wanted to compete, so I found the Zero Day Heist CTF on Unstop, registered, and signed up a teammate.
Then, right before it started, my teammate ran into some issues and had to drop out. One person against 500+ teams, and no backup plan.
I could have withdrawn. I didn’t. I used what I had: my OSINT method, structured problem-solving, and my AI coding agent pushed hard. Challenge by challenge, clue by clue, and every dead end told me something.
When the scoreboard froze, my team was third. The certificate is at the top of this post.
What I took from it
It didn’t show AI replacing expertise. It showed AI amplifying it. Strong fundamentals, creativity and judgement still matter most. The agent helped me move faster, try more ideas and cover more ground than I could alone.
The future of security isn’t humans against AI. It’s people who know how to work well with AI.
